


on the hook, off the line

by offlight



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Romantic Comedy, but not your typical fake/pretend relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:34:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28234002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/offlight/pseuds/offlight
Summary: The mission is simple -- get from one end of the country to the other in six days, convince everyone at the wedding that you're together, escape before anyone realizes the truth. How hard could it be?
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 11
Kudos: 55
Collections: 2020 Dimilix Exchange





	on the hook, off the line

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ringtheory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ringtheory/gifts).



> \- apologizing ahead of time because this fic is aggressively set in the u.s.  
> \- written for the dmfx exchange 2020 + my recipient ringtheory! i've always REALLY loved your style, so i tried to emulate some of your ~eclecticness~ and i found it to be a really FUN AMOUNT OF FREEDOM! i know that this fic genre wise is very different from what you typically do, but i hope its at least a lil entertaining  
> \- warning for one mention/vague depiction of animal death (dog)  
> 

Day 4, 10:12 PM

If Felix was forced to identify any moment in the whole ordeal as the moment when things began to fall apart—he would point to this one in Flagstaff, Arizona, where he’s staring at the single motel keycard in his hand and considering whether or not he’d suffer great back pain from sleeping in a bathtub for a night. 

At his side, Dimitri shifts the bag slung over his shoulder.

“Do you have thoughts?” he asks. Felix is not always good at reading him, but even he can tell that Dimitri is trying just a little too hard to be casual about this.

“Bathtub.” 

Dimitri sighs. “No.” He pauses. “For you, or me?”

“For me.”

“Okay, no.”

“Just give me some of the blankets or something.”

“There’s really no need to go that far. If you’re considering solutions—” 

“I can pad it with clothes.”

“—Well, they’d get dirty. But there’s likely an armchair. If there isn’t, I’ll sleep in the car.”

“You’re too tall for the backseat.”

“I could just—” Dimitri mimes the fetal position as best as he can while remaining upright. 

“That’s uncomfortable.”

“I appreciate your concern, but I’ll manage.”

“You’ll be sore. You have to drive tomorrow.” 

“As do you.”

Felix senses the beginnings of a headache. 

There is no clear, easy way to explain the situation. On paper, it wouldn’t be unusual at all for them to share a bed. They’ve shared beds many, many, many times before, and this one is also likely going to be larger than most of the others from their past. An upgrade. 

Felix takes out his anger on a pebble by his foot. It ricochets off the motel wall and rolls to the side. 

“How long is it tomorrow?” 

Dimitri turns to think. His line of sight tracks past the road beside them to the sun setting orange over the desert hills, highlighting the bold, horizontal lines of flat land and squat buildings around them. 

A pretty sight, if Felix were in the right place to appreciate it. 

“Eight hours, I believe? The drives for our last two days will be eight hours each, not including stops.” 

Eight. His legs hurt just thinking about it. 

In this moment of frustration, he allows himself a moment of indulgence—imagining a world where he can say fuck this, dropkick Dimitri’s duffel bag into a dumpster, and hitchhike all the way back to his apartment in Philadelphia, where his front door creaks and his room is cramped but at least his flickering bathroom light is familiar in its failure, and where he doesn’t have to answer or explain to anyone why this has been a road trip straight from hell. 

But a blink, and he’s still here. A world where he is sure Dimitri would get pissed and force them to “talk it out” if Felix were to kick his clothes into the trash.

“Fine,” he says. He swipes the keycard.1

If Felix was forced to identify any particular moment in the whole ordeal as the ‘beginning,’ he would have two options. 

The first:

Day -6452, 11:47 AM

During lunch on a Tuesday—while the other children are leaning across tables to fight over whose toys from home are the best—where a very young Dimitri is dissecting the filling from his Oreos and a very young Felix watches him with the rapt attention people usually save for zoo animals. 

“What are you doing with your cookie?” Felix asks. 

The young Dimitri pauses in his work and looks up, assessing Felix. At this age, he hasn’t shown any indication that he will one day grow up bright and broad-shouldered. As of now he is one of the scrawniest kids in class, notable for his disproportionately large head, and wears a lot of horizontally-striped button-down shirts. The young Felix is around the same—pinched-looking in a way that eventually eases when his features have more room to grow on his face, and wearing a print tee of an outdated cartoon show.

“Huh?” 

“Are you—do you eat your cookies like this?”

Felix points to the Oreo. Dimitri frowns. 

“I don’t like the Oreos cookie part. I just like the creme part.”

“Oh.”

Dimitri gets back to work. Felix observes as he takes both ends of the cookie and pulls. The filling sticks to one half, and he places the other on top of pile of black disks. Then, he peels away the filling with the ease of a professional. 

“You got it all,” Felix says, impressed. 

Dimitri smiles, his ears flushing red, as he adds the now-empty cookie to the discard pile. “Thanks. I eat this a lot.”

“My big brother likes Oreos too. He can eat fifty of them in his mouth at the same time.”

“Wow. I can only eat—um—“ Dimitri checks the packet. “Eight.”

Felix leans back in his chair. “Yeah, my big brother Glenn is in 8th grade, so he can eat a lot of things.”

Dimitri nods while munching on his creme circle. Felix glances from the now-empty Oreo packet to the cookie rejects. 

“Can I have one?”

Dimitri nods again, and pushes the napkin of his leftovers towards Felix. 

“You can have them all. I was going to throw them away.”

Felix stares at him. This form of generosity is foreign to him. Glenn had once wrestled the last frozen corn dog out of his weaker grip with the argument that the stick was too pointy for Felix and that he was too short to reach the microwave anyway, leaving Felix to starve until their dad came home hours later to make dinner. 

He picks up a cookie with the faintest remainder of a white outline from its dissection. It is then that he realizes Dimitri is the nicest boy in the entire world.

“You can have some of my—” Felix searches through his lunchbox for the fruit gummies his mom told him she packed, but that are suddenly missing. There is now nothing aside from his empty sandwich box, his ice pack, and a baggie of slightly-browned apple slices. 

“I was supposed to have fruit gummies,” he says, putting down the cookie to rifle through his lunchbox with more vigor. When that doesn’t prove effective, he turns it upside down and shakes it. 

The apples fall out. Dimitri brightens. 

“Oh, can I have an apple? My dad packed me green apples and I don’t like green apples.” 

He demonstrates by pulling out a similar baggie of apple slices—all of them, indeed, green. 

“Yes,” Felix says. He remembers Dimitri’s earlier magnanimity and tests it out for himself. “You can have all of them.”

The second: 

Day 0, 9:34 PM

Descending from an escalator with a suitcase perched on the stair next to him, surrounded by a gaggle of sleepy and anxious passengers not unlike himself, all of them coming down from headaches due to cabin pressure changes and crappy in-flight naps, while making guesses on how this reunion is likely to play out. 

His brain grants him a few options, all of them awful. 

Dimitri—waiting for him outside of the Arrivals gate, all smiles and “Can I help you with your bag?” and “It’s so good to see you again”s, shiny and scripted and perfect, with no room for Felix to call him out on being distant. 

Dimitri—late from having missed the complicated turns into the Arrivals gate, showing up fifteen minutes late, frazzled, with apologies about his inability to read the signs around the airport, buzzing with the energy to throw sparse and wistful glances at Felix as he pulls away from the curb.

Dimitri—holding a bag containing two orders of fried chicken, eyes lighting up the moment he steps into sight, sweeping over to give Felix a kiss on the crown of his head, the way he always used to do after they went a long time without seeing each other.

Thankfully, reality is much kinder. It presents:

Dimitri, standing just far enough from the sliding glass doors so as not to trigger them, scrolling on his phone and glancing up occasionally to scan the people descending the escalators. When he spots Felix, he does nothing more than smile—soft enough that Felix knows it’s real—and waits in the way that people do when presented with an awkward distance between themselves and the person they need to greet. 

“Hi,” he finally says, when Felix enters earshot. “That took a surprising amount of time.” 

He’s referring to the way that Felix’s plane had spent nearly an extra twenty minutes waiting for a gate to open—twenty minutes that Felix spent imagining awkward reunions, now made unnecessary by how unbothered Dimitri apparently is. 

“I know, it pissed me off. Did you get in trouble for leaving your car that long?” 

Dimitri shakes his head. The glass doors slide open as they turn to leave, buffeting them with Seattle chill. Felix pauses to zip up his jacket as Dimitri responds, “I parked in the garage just across the street. Would you like some help with your luggage?” 

“It’s fine,” Felix says, and lifts it easily with one hand to demonstrate. “Just clothes.”

“Very wise. You likely won’t need much more than that.” 

“Are we leaving tonight?” 

The crossing guard holds up her hand for them to stop and ushers cars past them. Dimitri turns to him with surprise. 

“You haven’t looked at the itinerary?” 

“No. There’s an itinerary?” 

A pause. It’s not long enough for Felix to tell if he’s upset or not before Dimitri continues, “Ingrid sent it in an email a few weeks ago.” 

“I didn’t see it.”

“Oh. You should take a look, it’s very comprehensive. She’s outlined all of the cities we’ll be stopping in, as well as fun attractions if we wanted to make any stops.”

“That doesn’t sound like Ingrid. She barely has time to sleep these days.” 

They’re beckoned to walk, and hasten together across the line of shuttles and taxis already clogging up behind the crossing guard.

“I think most of it must have been Dorothea’s doing. But it is still her wedding. I could understand her excitement.”2

The lights on Dimitri’s old BMW blink at them cheerfully when they come close. Just seeing the car is enough for the threat of nostalgia in his stomach—Felix hasn’t seen it in person in over a year, not with how infrequently he goes home. 

He tosses his suitcase into the trunk, which even smells the same as what he remembers. He runs into the same problem with the interior, and is nearly crushed by deja vu when he slides into the passenger seat and sees Dimitri blowing hot air into his hands while waiting for the heater to catch up. He doesn’t bother checking for the teeth marks on the inside door handle in the back, or for the extra napkins in the glove compartment.

“So we’re not leaving tonight.”

Dimitri shakes his head. “Tomorrow morning,” he responds, and turns the keys in the ignition. “You can stay at my place tonight.” 

Day 1, 4:18 AM

The timezone change from Pennsylvania to Oregon is disorienting enough that when Felix wakes up the morning of the first day, it’s so dark outside that it feels like the middle of the night. He passes the time by closing his eyes and thinking of what else he needs to get done before the pending application cycle, the slew of texts that he’d left sitting unanswered on his phone for too long, and if Ingrid and Dorothea were actually serious about the itinerary that he (finally) read last night before going to sleep, or if this was all some elaborate prank. 

He does not, despite his curiosity and ample amount of free time, go digging around Dimtiri’s apartment—because he was raised right, and because some things are really better left unknown.3

Thankfully, the sun starts to rise by the time he runs out of thoughts. Now a socially acceptable time to make noise, Felix pushes himself off the couch, tosses the throw blanket back into the wicker basket Dimitri had pulled it from last night, and wanders over to the kitchen to pull together something to eat. 

He’s in the middle of making a huge ham and cheese omelet when he hears the padding of bare feet by the kitchen door. 

“Thank you for making breakfast,” Dimitri says, voice garbled around his toothbrush. “You don’t have to do that.” 

Felix scrapes at the edges of the omelet with a wooden spoon to keep it from sticking. The brushing sounds get closer as Dimitri approaches, peers over his shoulder to get a look. Felix can smell the scent of his toothpaste over the egg. 

“I was hungry.” 

“Mmm. Sorry for getting up late.” He didn’t—they could leave at noon and still get to their first stop by the night—but Felix lets it slide. “I have a few more things to pack, but I’m ready to go after we eat.” 

“Sure.”

“Let me finish getting ready, and then I’ll take over while you wash up.” 

Felix waves him off with the spoon. When they switch off, he splashes water on his face and takes a moment to consider his reflection in Dimitri’s mirror. By the time he finishes with the bathroom and changes into new clothes, Dimitri has already relocated to the table.

The omelet, unfortunately, turns out bland. It takes him a few bites before he realizes what the problem is. 

“I forgot salt.”

Dimitri smiles. “It tastes fine.”

He’s already started scrambling his half of the egg with a fork. His bites are noticeably dainty. 

Felix takes a sip of coffee and raises an eyebrow. “You still do that?”

“What?”

“That stupid thing you do to food you don’t like to make it look like you’re eating more.”

Dimitri’s fork pauses. His ears turn red. 

“That’s not—”

“It’s fine. If you don’t want any, I’ll eat it.”

Felix sets down his mug and tries to pull the plate away, but Dimitri grabs it before it moves. 

“No, I—sorry, I didn’t realize. I wasn’t doing it on purpose.” 

“I’m not offended,” Felix says.

And it’s true, he’s not. But at this point, the red has crept down Dimitri’s neck and is blotching at his cheeks, and Felix’s reaction to seeing this is similarly automatic—he subconsciously grips harder on the plate, locks his jaw, prepares to engage.

Fortunately, it doesn’t last long. A few more reassurances that no, Felix’s feelings are not hurt and yes, forgetting salt is just a mistake that doesn’t reflect on his cooking skill and yes, he knows that Dimitri likes the tomato grilled cheeses he makes—which is unfortunate, because tomato grilled cheeses were what they always used to make for each other after school when they were fourteen, so the implication that Dimitri’s tastes haven’t matured in the near-ten years since they ate those religiously isn’t reassuring—and Felix finally wins the claim to the rest of the tasteless omelette. Dimitri starts working on a banana and watches him sadly.

They’re in the car long before noon. Their trip, as Felix clocks it while he’s pulling the BMW out onto an intersection, starts officially around 9:22 AM. 

Day 1, 9:41 AM

There’s been a lot of talk of an itinerary. Here it is:

Day one, five hours of driving from Seattle to La Grande, Oregon. Day two, four and a half to Twin Falls, Idaho. Day three, eight hours to Las Vegas. On day four, another four to Flagstaff, with room planned for them to detour through the Grand Canyon. Day five is eight hours to Roswell, New Mexico, and then a final eight to reach Austin, Texas at the end of day six. 

A grand total of 2500 miles, one way. 

“It’s brutal,” Felix says, once they hit the interstate and Dimitri brings it up. 

“I know,” Dimitri says. He’s picking through a bag of baby carrots and takes a moment to push one into Felix’s mouth. “I’m not sure if you know, but their original plan had us on the road for two weeks. It would have been more manageable to drive, but I told them we’d prefer a shorter route.”

“Wow, yes.” Two weeks on the road with just the two of them? Felix really would’ve refused to go then, decades-long friendship with Ingrid be damned. They could FaceTime him into the wedding. 

“I told them that you would be too busy for two weeks off.” 

“That’s true. They don’t need to spend that much energy on us anyway.”4

Dimitri nods. Felix hears the solid crunch of him biting through a carrot. 

“Weddings are certainly taxing to plan.” 

“I still don’t know how Ingrid managed to find the time with her work,” Felix says, and then opens his mouth to receive another baby carrot. 

“Oh, they had plenty of help,” Dimitri says. He takes a moment to tie a rubber band around the opening of the bag and stow it away, before settling into his seat and launching into a retelling of the logistical minutia he’d absorbed from his weekly check-ins with Ingrid, which he maintains with good energy and detail on for the next thirty-minutes of the drive. 

Day 1, 11:33 AM

Dimitri insists on paying for the first round of gas, since his tank was only partially full from the start and he feels it’s only fair. This leaves Felix to grab snacks, as they had already finished munching their way through the first bag of baby carrots and only have one more left as backup.

Felix checks for his wallet and, with the engine off, presses the home button on Dimitri’s phone to peek at the time.

The background makes him pause.

It’s a picture of himself at what he remembers to be around fifteen or sixteen, sprawled out on a couch, limbs akimbo in sleep. A Great Pyrenees is half on top of him, easily dwarfing him with her length and fluff, her head pressed against his chest and one paw thrown over his waist. Her plumed tail is curled over his legs. 

A knock on the window. Felix glances up to see Dimitri tapping at his wrist, head tilted in question. 

“Eleven-thirty,” Felix says, closing the door behind him as he slides out. 

Day 1, 11:59 AM

He waits until Dimitri merges onto the highway before bringing it up.

“Your phone lockscreen is still Bella.” Bella, at the time of the phone lockscreen photo, was ninety pounds and seven years old and Dimitri's favorite dog in the entire world. Her favorite past-times were running in the backyard and digging up rabbit dens, begging loudly for table scraps, and tackling Felix with a force that makes him careen over onto the ground.

There’s a pause before Dimitri responds. Felix notices his ears getting red again. 

“I’m so sorry, I completely forgot I had it set to that photo. Was it uncomfortable for you to see?”

“What, Bella? No—”

“Oh—no. I mean—” He’s starting to flex and flutter his hands. Another pause, and he takes his left hand off the wheel to scratch behind an ear. “Um, I can understand if you’re uncomfortable with being my phone background, considering the arrangement.” 

Felix intervenes. “It’s fine, I don’t mind.”

“I’ve been so accustomed to seeing it, I didn’t even realize.” 

“It just surprised me.”

“I see. I can change it.” 

“Seriously, it’s fine. I don’t care.” 

Dimitri shakes his head. “I’ll change it.” 

Day 1, 3:05 PM

_Road trip activity no. 4_

As designated passenger-side-DJ, Felix scrolls through Dimitri's playlists on his phone. He recognizes quite a few of the artists listed, but there are also many that he’s never heard of before.

He taps on one that he doesn’t recognize and is surprised by how electronic it sounds. In high school, everything they'd liked to listen to had real instruments. 

"When did you start listening to Flume?"

"Mmm. This was Claude's favorite song for a while. He always got it stuck in our heads while we were doing homework." He smiles at the memory. 

Felix tries not to notice and skips to the next song. This one is a pop anthem that he recalls being popular from a few years back, only because he could hear it blasting from the bars on the weekends as he walked back to his apartment. 

"From junior year?"

"Senior year, actually. I think this song came out in senior year."

"I thought you lived with Lorenz and Hilda in senior year?" 

"Ah—right. I did, but Claude was often around as well. We were all in debate together, remember?" 

“Right.” 

Day 1, 9:33 PM

By the time Felix showers and washes up in his hotel room, he finds himself exhausted from the mental fortitude it takes to play nice. He turns on the television and stares at it, mindlessly, while trying to piece together his thoughts. 

It feels like he’s still in the process of catching up to what this week will truly entail. Just being around Dimitri for a little over a full day is already more contact than they’d had in a long, long time. 

It’s worth wondering how it’ll go. Though—maybe that’s pointless, in its own way.

He turns off the television and pulls the covers up to his chin. It’s better to just take things as they come. 

Day 2, 7:48 AM

They had agreed, the night before, to leave earlier for Idaho. The city of Twin Falls, as it turns out, is named for the Shoshone Falls located just north of the city, as a part of the larger Snake River Canyon that spans across southern Idaho. 

“It’s taller than the Niagara Falls,” Felix reads off Wikipedia, over their complimentary continental breakfast. 

An older man tries to scoot by their table to reach for the small mini-fridge of yogurts in the corner. Felix grabs the handle of his suitcase and pulls it closer to keep it out of the way—the man grunts in thanks. At the corner of the room, a family in matching vacation shirts argue loudly over bathroom breaks that need or do not need to be taken prior to hitting the road again. 

Across from him, backlit by the early sun, Dimitri is sawing intensely at his waffle with a plastic fork and knife. His hair is fluffier than usual today, in the way that it gets when he sleeps with it still wet. He nods.

“I only went to Niagara once. When I was in—” He pauses to think. “—Fourth grade. Or was it fifth grade?”

Felix shrugs. He has more memories of Dimitri making weak attempts at recounting this elusive Blaiddyd family Niagara trip more than he has any real recollection of Dimitri being gone for one week. 

He scrolls a little further on the screen with his right hand, turns his coffee cup with his left. The older man scoots back out from behind him, yogurt in hand. “Some people call it the Niagara of the West. I think it’ll be too big to get a complete picture with the Polaroid.”

“Perhaps. Let’s see when we arrive.”

“Even if you stood far away, you probably wouldn’t be able to get all of it. Look at how wide it is.”

They stare down at the photo on Felix’s phone. 

“Well, maybe if you took it of me, and you stood further away.”

“Does it have to have you in it? The email never said we had to be in it.”

“But I think it would be less memorable if it was just a picture of a waterfall. And Sylvain may accuse us of cheating and printing out a photo.” 

“How could we have printed it out? It’s on the Polaroid paper.” 

“There are printers that do it now.”

There’s a beep from the waffle iron next to them, and Dimitri rises with the plate he’d already prepared beforehand. Two kids in ‘VEGAS, KA-CHING!” shirts from the little family stare at him, track his movements, before rushing to take it over after he turns back around. 

Felix accepts it with some reservations.5

His first bite is surprising. It’s warm from just coming out of the griddle and is softer than he expected. 

“It’s pretty good.” 

Dimitri’s face relaxes into a smile. 

“I thought you would enjoy them. Would you like a knife?” 

Felix continues to tear at it with two forks. “No.”

“Okay."

Day 2, 9:23 AM

Felix tinkers with the Polaroid camera as radio advertisements drone on in the background. He’s never held one before, had only seen them in stores or Instagram photos. 

“Did you put batteries in it?” he asks. 

Dimitri glances away from the road to him. “I did, but I didn’t put in any film.”

“Do you have any?”

“Yes, it was included with the camera. It’s in the bag.” 

Felix begins to ruffle around by the bags stuffed by his feet, and he feels Dimitri looking over again. 

“Not my backpack. The other—the red—yes, that one.” 

The red bag is small and, when Felix opens it, looks like it contains the rest of the package that Ingrid had mailed to Dimitri’s house. There are two boxes, each of them with ten films inside. It takes some internet searching and careful squinting at tiny-print instructions before Felix understands it enough to load the film into a panel at the back.

He holds it up, closes one eye, and squints through the eyepiece at the thin, one-lane highway ahead of them. 

The ground is flat and smothered with even-looking grassland, browned with the fall. Through the eyepiece, the parallel lines of the road feel like they’re converging right at their car.

“I don’t know what we’re supposed to take pictures of.”

“Well, I think you could take photos of anything that you find memorable or fun for the scrapbook.” This is not a particularly insightful thing to say, as ‘memorable and fun for a scrapbook that Doro and I want to put together of the wedding’ was, verbatim, what Ingrid wrote in the itinerary and instructions email.

He turns the camera to Dimitri. 

The little viewfinder box makes him look distant, as if he was a hallway away and not merely within arm’s reach.

Dimitri smiles. “I would pose, but I can’t take my eyes off the road.”

“Don’t. Just look candid.” 

His jaw tightens immediately, his eyelids falling just enough for him to look like he’s trying too hard to be casual. 

Felix rolls his eyes. He lowers the camera, and then changes his mind and raises it back to look at the road again. 

“I’ll catch you when you’re not expecting it.” 

“That’s much more unsettling.” 

“Good.”6

Day 2, 11:37 AM

_Road trip activity no. 11_

“If you’re bored, just nap.” 

“I only just woke up, it’s too hard for me to fall asleep again. Is it a mammal?” 

“No.”

“Hmm, I see. Does it live in the ocean or freshwater?” 

“That’s two questions.” 

“Oh—the ocean, then?”

“No. And no to freshwater.”

“Hmm...”

Felix merges another lane to the left. “Give up if you don’t have any ideas.” 

“I’m only seven questions in, I can still guess it. Is it a reptile?” 

“Yes. You’re not going to guess it.” 

“Why? Did you make it something very difficult to guess?”

“...Is that one of your questions?” 

“Oh—no, it isn’t. Let me think—”

Day 2, 12:53 PM

They take a stop just before Twin Falls for lunch. This is a diner Dimitri had picked, after they’d combed through all of the local restaurants on Yelp, for its retro theme and for his fleeting hopes that they’d have a functional jukebox. 

“You still haven’t found one after all this time?” Felix asks. This is something he’d been going on about ever since they first watched Grease together, nearly ten years ago. 

“I’d forgotten for a while,” he responds, while perusing through the menu. “But wouldn’t it be fun? I think it would make for a good Polaroid photo.” 

He looks up and takes a look around the space to confirm that, despite the red vinyl booths and black-and-white tiled floor, there doesn’t seem to be a jukebox around. The bright colors highlight the picturesque blue sky through the wide windows, showing off the low-hanging, cotton ball-like clouds.

“I wonder if we’ll run into one on the way to Austin.”

Felix shrugs. “We can keep trying. I like diner food.”

“What, because of the burgers?” he asks, smiling down at the menu. “You don’t think you’d get sick of them?” 

“Speak for yourself, waffle man."

Day 2, 4:02 PM

It’s a very quick stroll from the parking lot to the viewing platforms for the falls, though the Shoshone falls themselves had been visible from the moment they drove through the final turn of tree-lined mountain roads and saw their view expand out into a wide, deep canyon.

Something about the air around the falls makes Felix’s lungs feel light and full. He takes a few deep breaths, holds his hand as he stares up into the sky. The clouds from earlier cleared long before they reached Twin Falls, before they checked into their hotel, and made a little detour to the falls. Now, it looks so pale that it’s almost white. He can hear Dimitri stepping behind him, walking a little slower with all of the attention he’s dedicating towards fiddling with the Polaroid, its cheerful chevron-pink strap looped around his neck. 

The falls themselves are stunning—wide, frothy-white, and impossibly tall. He’s overwhelmed by the loud crashing of the waves, deafeningly loud despite their position on the other end of the canyon. In the distance, he can make out the flat outcropping of misty plateaus. 

“It’s amazing,” Felix says, loud enough to be heard, and gives Dimitri a nudge to make him look up from the camera. 

Dimitri’s still squinting down and fiddling with one of the buttons on the Polaroid, but he nods. “I know. I hadn’t imagined it would be so large. I can see how it’s taller than the Niagara falls.” 

When Felix turns, he can see the canyon extending far into the distance, cupping a winding, threading green river. Little snakes of foam form and disappear against the water. 

Dimitri finally looks up and he leans against the railing, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply. 

“It’s so beautiful,” he says, turning and presenting a smile so broad it brightens his whole face. “What a good day to come, too. The sky is so clear.” 

“We got lucky.”

“I think so, too.” 

A family against the railing closest to the waterfall begins to clear away. The youngest boy in their party catches sight of Dimitri’s Polaroid camera and stares at it for so long that Dimitri eventually offers to take his family’s picture for them. 

Felix steps aside to watch as the dad gathers his children—one per arm, and the oldest standing in front of him with her arms thrown out wide and gappy smile on full display—and as Dimitri mirrors their grins, helps them count down, and then passes them the photo afterwards. 

“Would you like me to take a picture of you two?” the dad offers, as the kids gather around the little photograph to watch the colors develop. 

They exchange a glance, which ends when Felix shrugs. 

“Yes, please, thank you.” 

They turn and rearrange themselves against the railing. Dimitri raises his arm, hesitates, and almost drops it before Felix grabs it and pulls it around his neck. 

“Okay, ready? Smile now—three—two—”

Day 2, 7:48 PM

Felix is in the middle of figuring out which of their two pizzas is the sausage one while Dimitri is laid back on the bed, holding up and staring at the photo they took at the falls. The television is playing on a low volume, turned on from when Felix had been curious about what channels they get. It is now showing a random thriller, and currently has a headshot of one of the characters receiving a letter that seems like it’s carrying very, very bad news. 

“We never ended up going on any trips together in all those years, did we?” Dimitri asks, “I wonder why that was.”

“Um—” Not this one—this one is Hawaiian. “What do you mean? We went to Hershey Park over the summer. And Disney.” He checks the other—perfect.

“That’s true, but we went to Hershey Park with Sylvain and Ingrid. And we went to Disney for band. I meant just with us two.” 

Felix pulls out a slice, lowers himself into the uncomfortable hotel chair, and shoves half of it in his mouth. It hadn’t sounded right to say that they never went on any trips with just the two of them—given how long they’d known each other, that just seems statistically improbable—but the more that he thinks about it, the more that he realizes it’s true. 

“We were probably too young.” 

Dimitri drops the arm holding up the photo and turns towards the pizzas. 

“Can you pass me mine, please?” 

Felix does, and watches him push himself up to a sitting position before balancing the box precariously on the bedside table, making himself against the headboard before grabbing his first slice.

“Sometimes I forget that we were so young when we started dating.” 

“Probably too young to know what it meant to be dating.”7

Dimitri laughs. “I think we figured it out.”8

Felix has no idea how to respond to that, so he folds his crust in half and shoves it into his mouth all once to buy himself some more time. 

“You wanted to go on trips?” he finally asks, after an appropriate amount of time spent chewing and swallowing. 

“Why not? I think we could have gone to some fun places. The waterfalls were so beautiful today, I wonder what it would have been like to go camping. There are some good places for camping in Washington that are supposed to be very, very beautiful.”

“Washington is so far.” 

The smile that had been on Dimitri’s face begins to fall. “From Pennsylvania? That’s true. You would have had to take a plane.” 

Felix shrugs. “Sure. Then we could have gone camping. We can still go sometime next year.”

“Hmm. Well, it won’t be the same as—”

“I know. I just meant—you know. We can still go.” 

“True. We can still go.” 

It takes them only half an hour to polish off most of the pizzas. They push the rest into the little mini-fridge under Dimitri’s television stand, and Felix leaves for his own room next door. 

Las Vegas, tomorrow. 

Day 3, 10:15 AM

_Road trip activity no. 17_

This is something that they'd both known they would need to do, but that he finally takes the initiative of bringing up when their arrival begins to loom on the horizon. If given the chance, he knows that Dimitri would put it off until the night before. 

He finally brings it up when the navigation on Dimitri’s phone shows that they’ll be on this stretch of highway for the next two hours with no interruptions. 

“We need to go through our phones.” 

Though his expression doesn’t change, Felix thinks he can make out a whiteness in how he’s holding the steering wheel so tight.

"I'll do it for you, if you don't want to," Felix says.

He pauses for so long that Felix doesn't think he'll agree—but then he reaches forward for his phone, pulls it off of the stand that was suction-cupped onto the dashboard. 

Felix accepts it. The background is of the Shoshone Falls. 

"I'm sorry," Dimitri says, and Felix is glad that he's forced to pay attention to driving and isn't trying to make unnecessary eye contact. "I should have done it earlier."

"It's fine, I didn't do mine either." 

"Do you need my password?"

He doesn't. His fingerprint had already opened it automatically. 

"I got in."

He navigates over to the messages and scrolls down until he finds his own name—past Hilda, past Claude, past Sylvain, past Ingrid, past Mercedes, past random names that Felix hasn't even heard of before—and taps.

The last message in their conversation is a little gray bubble, from Felix, reading: 'not through text. if you want to talk, call me.'

He presses his thumb down until the options come up. He taps down on the message, and a little circle to the left of it lights up blue. 

The message just before this conversation, as the one that had prompted that response, reads: 'I don't think you're happy with me anymore.' 

He highlights this one too.9

The next half hour is spent clearing Dimitri’s phone of their texts. He finally presses the delete button, after scrolling back so far that his phone has begun to lag, and the messages disappear as if they had never been sent.

"How far back should I go?" 

Dimitri has since stopped looking tense, though he does sound distant when he speaks.

"I don't know. Do you think it's enough for them to not notice anything?" 

"Depends on who gets their hands on your phone. You have nosy friends." 

"Then maybe we should delete more."

Felix shrugs. He goes back to highlighting texts. Now he's scrolling back through messages sent two years ago. 

Dimitri reaches for his sunglasses and puts them on. "Make sure you delete the same ones from your phone."

"Yeah, I know." 

Day 3, 1:12 PM

The eight hours from Twin Falls to Las Vegas is so unforgiving that they both agree to get drive-through for lunch and grab a proper dinner when they arrive. 

This is why Felix finds himself sitting in the passenger side, alternating between cramming fries into Dimitri’s mouth and taking bites out of his chicken wrap, all while listening to how Dedue had apparently dyed his hair blue for a month a few years ago. 

“I don’t understand the appeal of dyeing your hair a color that unnatural.” 

Dimitri raises his eyebrows. “Really? Are you sure? Didn’t you want a red streak in your hair all those years ago?” He leans over and opens his mouth, and Felix feeds him another bundle of fries. 

“I can’t be held responsible for what I wanted to do as a teenager.” 

“I’m not sure about that. Besides, he looked good. I was quite surprised that he did it, too, but I think it makes sense. A lot of his friends at college were art students, I think he said that some of them did it for him. I think he still has some photos on Instagram, if you wanted to see.” 

Felix doesn’t find his curiosity high enough to pull out his phone, but Dimitri starts reading off Dedue’s Instagram handle from memory, and then he has no choice but to pull it out and take a peek.

It takes him a while of scrolling to reach the photos that Dimitri was talking about—three years ago. It’s a photograph of him with Mercedes, Ashe, and Caspar on his birthday, with all three of them wearing matching feather boas. Though the lighting is dim, Felix can make out the dark aqua in his hair. 

“He came home with it one summer. I think it might have been our junior year.” 

Felix scrolls. He can see a few more photos with him in this hair color. Dimitri is in a few too, his smile wide, with his hair shorter than Felix had remembered it being during those months. 

“I stayed at school that summer for research,” he says, before pushing the rest of his chicken wrap into his mouth at once.

“Oh—right. I forgot.” 

Day 3, 6:41 PM

_Road trip activity no. 22_

Dimitri asks him, between another two rounds of twenty questions, about his med school applications. 

“They’ll be fine. I’ll get in this round,” Felix says, though this is mostly a lie. Though all of his qualifications look reasonable on paper, he still can’t be certain of acceptance. No one can. 

“That’s very exciting. You’ve worked hard and you have the experience to show for it. They’d be fools to not take you.”

He says this with such conviction that Felix has to look away. He props his chin on his palm and turns to look out the window. Dimitri has another episode of some NPR show playing, though Felix is convinced that neither of them have been paying any attention to it. 

“And you? Going to go and...teach some kids?” 

He’s not looking, but he thinks he can hear the slight smile in Dimitri’s tone as he responds, “That’s the plan. Did I tell you about my plans for graduate school?”

No, he hasn’t. This news comes as a surprise. 

“You’re going to go to a graduate school? For teaching?”

“Mmm, yes. I’m applying for a Master’s program in History Education.”

“You’re going to teach history?” 

“I was thinking of it. Either that, or English Literature. Though I like working with younger kids more, and they may be too young for literature classes. That might be more high school.”

Felix taps his fingers against his chin. They’d passed the ‘Welcome to Nevada’ sign a while back, and it feels like the highway is slowly filling up as they approach their stop. “No, little kids have reading time with the picture books and everything. They need to learn how to read, too. You should just do what you want to.”

This time he turns, so he can see Dimitri’s smile a little more clearly. It makes him think that maybe he didn’t fuck up this conversation.10

Day 3, 6:54 PM

After driving through hours of flatter land and relatively residential and small-town looking areas, they finally turn onto Las Vegas Boulevard.

“Oh wow,” Dimitri whispers, leaning forward in his seat with his phone to record as Felix drives them slowly past palatial hotels and tall palm trees, fountains that look as large as lakes, marquees advertising shows and performances. “This is more extravagant than I expected.” 

They pass another hotel with what Felix later confirms is a roller coaster. Many of the lights are already turning on with the sunset, but once the sun sets in full, they will light up the sky with the same ferocity as the daytime sun. 

“I guess the movies were right,” Felix says.

Day 3, 7:39 PM

Even with all of the ritz and glamor outside, nothing could have prepared him for the flashing, musical chaos that greeted him inside. 

A surprise had been that hotel rooms are relatively cheap at Vegas, given that the hotel makes all of the money back through the casinos and overpriced restaurants. The theory is that once people get through the door, they’d be much more willing to cycle through massive amounts of money on slots and blackjack and baccarat and roulette and poker. 

Fortunately for Felix—and unfortunately for the house—the cheerful clanging of tokens and tinny melodies from the slots do nothing except encourage his headache. He stands through the hectic check-in line, dodges through the casino floor, and takes lavish hallway after hallway of shops and restaurants and attractions until he finally finds the elevator and then, soon, his room on the ninth floor. 

At night, Vegas looks like a perpetual party. The large window overlooks the streets, showing off the masses wandering the sidewalks in search of parties, and the opulent, massive, themed structures of the hotels. As he watches, there is a fountain show in progress at their hotel—the fountain lighting up in alternating colors, in beat with what he assumes is music. There is too much stimulation. 

Due to the popularity of the hotel and the sheer amount of rooms there, their rooms are in completely different towers. It takes Felix over twenty minutes of following Dimitri’s instructions before he finally finds him at one of the classy, dark bars on the third floor. 

“I’m done with Vegas,” Felix says, once he takes a seat. 

“We haven’t even been here for an hour, but I agree,” Dimitri says, one hand pressing against his forehead and the other flipping through the menu. He pushes it towards Felix. “Do you see how they have six pages of cocktails?” 

“Are you thinking of getting one?”

“No, I’m only commenting on the culture here. It reminds me very much of the first few years of college.”

Right, the first few years of college. Felix had always been the type to be highly aware of what he would and wouldn’t like, whereas Dimitri had once done a keg stand because enough people asked him to. He was the only one, between the two of them, that had successfully completed the traditional hectic and drunken transition.11

As Felix had not had quite the same experience, something different comes to mind.

“Do you remember prom?” he asks, and the smile and laugh Dimitri breaks into is infectious. 

“The one from junior year, or senior year?”

“I was thinking of senior year.”

They’d actually stayed through the whole night and through the after-party at Sylvain’s house for that one. In junior year, they’d left early to fool around in Dimitri’s stupid BMW, and were relentlessly teased for it for the next few weeks. 

A waiter brings out a basket of mozzarella sticks. When Dimitri breaks one open, the cheese melts down into a U-shape. Felix pushes a napkin towards him. 

“Senior year was Gatsby-themed, wasn’t it?” Dimitri asks.

“Yeah, with all of the black and gold decoration style—the geometric one. That was the one held in the hotel downtown.” 

“I remember. We got our boutonnieres from that florist at the farmer’s market.”

They had gotten them for free, because Dimitri’s dad had been so fond of them that he was known as a regular. They’d gotten them for free during their junior year too—though they went comparatively under-appreciated, as they’d been found crushed on the floor of the car the next day.

Their orders arrive while they’re both mid-bite in the mozzarella sticks, and it takes some shuffling around to situate the baskets of fries and onion rings, sandwiches and buffalo wings.12

“I’d thought prom was the noisiest place I had to suffer through before I came here,” Felix says.

“Vegas does tend to attract a certain crowd. I don’t think I’ll be coming back either—though, I have always wanted to see some of the famous shows. I’ve seen so many advertisements for Cirque du Soleil.”

Felix shakes his head. “That’ll just give you anxiety.” 

“What? Because of the—?”

“Think about all of those people free-floating high up at the ceiling, juggling fire, bending themselves in half—”

“Okay, okay—okay. I think I understand what you mean.” 

Day 4, 8:25 AM

As a true testament to how exhausting the past few days have been, Felix wakes up so suddenly that he realizes he doesn’t even remember falling asleep. 

He doesn’t have much time to think on it—cleans up, changes and re-packs, and heads downstairs to meet up with Dimitri so that they can get another early start. A little bit of exploring and souvenir shopping around Vegas, and then they need to leave with enough time to check out the Grand Canyon on their way to Flagstaff, Arizona.

“We should get this for Annette,” Felix says. He holds up a teddy bear that Dimitri has to squint to read, with how tiny the text on its shirt is— _‘Someone who loves me very much went to Las Vegas and all they got me was this stuffed bear!’_

“Do you think? I’m not sure if she’ll like it.”

“Maybe not, but it’s funny.”

“It’s a little wordy. They probably could have shortened it to—“

“That’s what makes it funny.”

In the end, they settle on a snow-globe of the Vegas skyline for her, bought from a little cart next to a hot dog stand. They pick up a clear paperweight filled with sparkling casino chips for Dedue and a ‘Vegas, Baby’ bumper sticker for Ashe from a small outdoor market. Ingrid and Dorothea get matching Vegas-themed flasks from a souvenir shop inside of the Italian-themed hotel13, Mercedes gets an enormous ceramic fridge magnet from the Egyptian-themed hotel, and Sylvain gets an obscene-looking shot glass from the Roman-themed one. 

And then—because Dimitri had laughed so hard when he first saw it that he couldn’t breathe—Felix buys him the ‘ _I get SLOTTY in Las Vegas_ ’ shirt for the hell of it. 

Day 4, 11:16 AM

They have brunch, right before setting out for Flagstaff, at another 50’s themed diner that Dimitri had diligently found through more Yelp searches and had singled out for the jukebox in the photos. 

When they get there the jukebox is on display, proudly lit, against the breakfast bar. It looks like the classic jukebox in old movies, polished up and turned on, complete with bright bubble tubes that change from amber to sunshine yellow and back. 

Felix takes a seat and opens the menu and thinks to himself how all diner food feels the same and how, despite being so many miles away from their first diner on the trip, it almost feels like he’s connected to the diner from the first day through this current one. Must be the vinyl seats and the omelet selection. 

He watches as Dimitri examines the jukebox, bends to look through the glass, presses experimentally on a few buttons. Dimitri turns and asks something to the cashier standing nearby.

He comes back a few seconds later. 

“Broken,” he says, sounding so sad and pathetic that Felix orders him a malt milkshake in hopes that it alleviates his disappointment. 

Day 4, 3:14 PM

_Road trip activity no. 41_

The scent hits him before he even spots it in his peripheral vision.

He cranes his neck away, as far as he can while still holding the steering wheel steady. 

“No.” 

“It is very sweet, but you have to taste it rank it.” 

“I don’t have to. This one is going at the very bottom.” 

“Below the Butterfinger bar? I don’t think this one is that bad.” 

Dimitri pushes it closer towards him. Felix leans away more—the car swerves slightly. 

“Just one taste. I think it’ll surprise you.”

He takes a bite, just to make it go away, and his tastebuds immediately begin to wither away. It felt like a saccharine, sour version of the color blue. 

“That’s disgusting. Put it at the bottom.” 

“Really? I kind of like it.” Felix can sense Dimitri pop it into his mouth. “It reminds me of popsicles that we’d get at the ice cream truck when we were younger. I think it goes above the fudge bar.”

“No, the fudge bar is at the top.”14

“It was too rich.”

“No it wasn’t. This one tasted fluorescent, it should be on the bottom out of unhealthiness alone.” 

“That doesn’t seem like a fair factor. None of them are exactly healthy—well—maybe the fruit bar.” 

“It’s too artificial.” 

“Hmm. Then I’ll leave it in the middle for now, and we can reassess later.” 

He smoothes the wrapper out on napkins laid along the dashboard. Immediately, a little blue aura begins to seep around it. The sound of crinkling fills the car as he reaches down to the bag for the next one, brings it up to his face to read the label. 

“Cookie ice cream sandwich,” he declares, after a pause, and begins to wrest it open. 

Day 4, 5:22 PM

They don’t have much time at the Grand Canyon, given how long they spent wandering around Vegas before they left. 

Instead, they opt to do a simple drive around part of the rim. Felix is the one that navigates this stretch, reading off narrow turns to Dimitri, as they pull astride one side of the canyon and step out to join a small crowd against the banister. 

It reminds him immediately of the Shoshone Falls, except this time on a much wider, deeper scale. The canyon looks cut perfectly, gentle slopes layered with colors of burnt red to tan, dotted sparsely with plant life, with the sense of unreplicable grandeur that often comes with natural landscapes of this scale. Threaded down the center of the cliffs is a winding river, long and clear and low.

Felix takes a photo of the canyon alone, with the Polaroid. The picture develops faded, but beautiful.

“I can ask someone to take a photo of us,” Dimitri says, looking around the crowd already. 

“We’re already running late, we should just take it ourselves. There’s a mirror here for it.” Felix taps on the little reflective rectangle just to the side of the lens. 

“Oh—that could be fun. Let’s try.”15

Day 4, 6:46 PM

“The point is that we just have to act like we’re still together.”

“Of course. I just...” 

Dimitri trails off. The radio is off, with no songs or podcasts playing—which is fair, because Felix doesn’t know if he could have this conversation if there was a talk show host trying to discuss relationships or self-care in the background. 

“Can you do it? Because if you can’t do it, we should just tell them now.”

Dimitri shifts, leaning his head against the passenger-side window. The sun had come out a while ago and is keeping the inside of the car toasty warm. The cardigan that he’d been wearing before is now draped in his lap. 

“It’s way too late for that. Besides, the wedding itself will only be a little over a day, I can’t imagine it would be that difficult to make it through.” He hesitates, and then continues. “I think it’s just the trip.”

Felix feels his mouth sour. “Okay. Well, it’s almost over.”

“That’s not what I meant.” 

There’s another long moment of silence. Felix is ready to believe they’re going to just let the subject drop before Dimitri turns to rummage through the candy bar wrappers, chip bags, and opened utensil packages in the center console. He eventually finds a napkin and starts to wipe at his face with it. 

“I just missed you a lot, I think.”

Bless the fact that he’s driving and that he has something to do with his hands.

“I missed you too.”

There’s a quick sniff from the side. Dimitri sounds more steady when he speaks again. 

“Sorry. Four years is just a long time. I think I got so used to being apart that I forgot what it felt like to be together.”

Maybe that’s what Felix had been feeling over the past few days—the reason for the low, low ache in his chest every time he watches Dimitri search up diners or talk about continental breakfast.

Now that it’s been given a name, he has to take a deep breath to dislodge that feeling again. 

“Right. But it is what it is. It’s better that we do this before we get there, anyway. It’d be pretty hard to explain away.”

“That’s true. They’d see through us in an instant. Especially you—to be honest.”

Felix shrugs. “Probably.”

“It’s probably a better idea that we re-adjust to being close, just to be more convincing. It makes for a better cover. And then—as you said—it’ll be over before we know it, and then we can go back to—”

“Right.”

Day 4, 10:38 PM

All of this, then, which leads us back to Flagstaff, Arizona—to room 14 of a small hotel on the way out of the town, with the shower faucet dripping and bathroom mirror still fogged up from their late showers. 

Felix lays on his side and stares resolutely at the headlights passing outside of the window, his muscles held tense. Apparently, Dimitri still uses the same body wash that he’d used since high school, and smelling the proximity of it makes him desperate to clear his head. He turns his nose into his pillow and instead breathes in the dry, stale scent of dust. 

He is not on the side that would give him a good view of the red numbers on the clock, so he doesn’t know how late it is before he manages to fall asleep. All he knows is that he’s most definitely not the last one to asleep, if Dimitri’s quiet but careful breaths were anything to go by, and that when he wakes up hours later he feels as if he’d just run a marathon.16

Day 5, 8:19 AM

Their hotel in Vegas had been too fancy for complimentary continental breakfasts, so it makes sense that Dimitri is very careful about bringing that tradition back. 

Two waffles, fresh from the waffle iron, with yogurt cups and sausage patties. A fork and a knife for Dimitri, and two forks for Felix—because of course, Dimitri would overthink it. They eat in relative silence as the only two people in the tiny breakfast area, with only the local morning news playing from a small television mounted in the corner. 

“So, Roswell today,” Dimitri says, at some point when they’re halfway done with their waffles. 

Felix braces himself and looks up. It’s the first thing either of them have said to each other since the night before. 

Dimitri seems to grow self-conscious the moment their eyes meet. He looks back down and starts sawing at his waffle again. 

“Um—do you think we’ll run into any aliens?”

“God. Stop.”

Day 5, 10:08 AM

_Road trip activity no. 62_

“Oh, this one isn’t my favorite.” 

“What?” Felix says, sitting up straighter in his seat. “Did you hear the chorus?”

“I did. It’s fine, but—don’t you think it’s a little generic?”

“No. Nothing they do is generic. Their newest album—hold on, let me find it—”

“It reminds me of that other indie band. What was their name—they did the song that goes—” 

He breaks off into a hum that makes Felix stop scrolling on his phone and lean back against his seat, cursing quietly. 

He knows this song. It was one that was popular when they were in early high school—or late middle school?

“Hold on.”

Dimitri keeps humming.

“Hold on,” Felix repeats, louder, bending over his phone as he starts scrolling faster. “I know this.”

Day 5, 10:53 AM

“There’s something fun about the photos,” Dimitri says, when he wakes up from his nap and decides to flip through their Polaroid photos so far. “They remind me of scavenger hunts.”

“Scavenger hunts. When did you ever do scavenger hunts?”

“Sylvain’s birthday that one year, do you remember? It was a long time ago, back in middle school.” 

Felix doesn’t. He spots the blur of the photo dropping to the ground by Dimitri’s feet, the little gasp, and accompanying rustling as he bends down to pick it back up. 

“When we were in the mall. He gave us a stack of photos and we had to recreate them with our phone cameras. You were on my team.”

He’s beginning to remember, very vaguely. There’s an image coming to mind of the two of them speed-walking on the second floor of the local mall, Dimitri scanning the storefronts while Felix pins a glare on a random kid from their 6th-grade class that had shared a class with Sylvain at the time. 

“I think I remember. We won.”

“We did. Well, because you got so competitive and started running ahead—”

“You told me to run ahead while you stalled the other kids.” 

“Oh, did I?” Dimitri asks, unmoved. “That sounds a little familiar.” 

“Because that’s what happened.”

“I thought you didn’t remember?” 

He didn’t at first, but it’s coming back to him now. After their group finished and gathered at a long table in the food court for cookie cake, they’d held hands under the table. It had been ridiculously conspicuous. 

“These photos remind you of scavenger hunts because you have to take pictures?”

Dimitri packs the Polaroids back into Felix’s backpack. “Maybe. I think so. More than that it feels a bit like a game, the part about taking pictures that they’d want to include in the scrapbook. Do you think that was Ingrid’s intention?” 

Felix makes as noncommittal of a noise as possible. “It’s not like it’s a game we can win.”

“Not in the traditional sense.” 

Day 5, 12:21 PM

_Road trip activity no. 68_

“I wasn’t ignoring you on purpose. I didn’t check my phone as often as you did because I had so much work. That wasn’t something I could control.”

“I know, and it’s not that I’m saying I wasn’t aware you were busy. I know your classes were hard and you were working a lot, but I—”

“Not everyone had the time to spend hours watching peoples’ stories on Instagram.” 

A sharp exhale. 

“You always say that as if I was texting you because I had nothing better to do but bother you.”

“That’s not what I said. You just had more time than me to worry about nothing.”

“Abou—About noth—really? I don’t think I was asking too much to just know how you were doing.”

“But that’s not what you were doing. You were—”

Day 5, 1:00 PM

Felix cuts the engine and pulls the lever to uncover the gas cap, albeit a bit roughly. He slams the door on his way out. 

Dimitri, unwilling to let it go, follows in suit. The bits of his hair that had flopped out of his hair-tie and over his eyes, which had looked borderline attractive that morning, now make him look ridiculous. 

“I would go weeks without hearing from you, what was I supposed to think?” 

“You just said that you knew I was busy. And if you had your way, I would have had to send you an update every hour.”

“I know, but—”

“I had projects and exams, and I had to get extracurriculars for my applications—”

“I know that!” Dimitri sounds so pointlessly emphatic that Felix rolls his eyes as he jams the gas nozzle into the car. It doesn’t start when he latches the handle, and he curses to himself before retrying. “But it takes seconds to send a message—”

“Are you telling me I should have cut corners in my classes?”

“No, I’m only saying it would have taken seconds for you to reach out, if you cared enough to do it. Was it really that hard for you to remember something outside of—”

Something in the nozzle finally clicks, and the numbers begin to rise.

“That’s a lie. You know that’s a lie. You’d always say you wanted to call, and then it would take hours—”

“Because I would never hear from you otherwise!” 

“We tried it your way in sophomore year and it didn’t work. My GPA—”

“Yes, it did go down a little, but if only you’d given it a chan—”

“It went down to a 3.6, Dimitri. In one semester.”

“That was the semester that you had Organic Chemistry. You always said that was a hard class.”

He wants to say something mean, and has to very consciously swallow it back. 

Dimitri is sitting lightly on the hood of the car, faced away and looking into the gas station with his arms crossed over his chest. 

“You’re going to get your ass dusty from sitting on there,” Felix says.

“You could have tried harder,” Dimitri mutters. 

There’s a small pop from the nozzle, cutting off the gas. Felix takes it out and shoves it back into its holder, ignores the prompt for a receipt.

“I’m going to the bathroom.”

Day 5, 1:34 PM

He’d had his eyes closed for a long while, since they left the gas station, but he hasn’t been able to fall asleep. 

The window, pressed against his forehead, is comfortingly cool in contrast to the heater.

Dimitri’s podcast continues to play in the background. Felix listens, half-heartedly, and learns about mountain goat farms.

Day 5, 6:41 PM

Roswell is definitely a town that knows and unabashedly embraces its claim to fame. Even as they were driving in past the welcome sign—tastefully green, with a UFO on the corner—Felix could see enormous statues of lime green aliens with black disk eyes so large they took up two-thirds of their faces. 

Due to the sprawl of the town, it was a little harder to wander and experience, especially since they’d arrived when some of the stores and attractions were already closing. The souvenir shops are a little smaller, with less options in their stock, but they get the job done. 

Felix buys a hat that says ‘Area 51 Employee’ on it, with a lime green alien holding up a peace sign, and passes it to Dimitri before pushing him towards an enormous statue of another alien, this one with fading paint and rust along the bottom. 

“Look like you’re having fun,” he orders, before holding up the Polaroid. Dimitri rolls his eyes, but he does smile for the camera. 

Neither of them are in the mood for much more exploring. They go to dinner early—another retro diner that Dimitri had found, and that they had agreed on for dinner the day before. 

It looks like all the rest. Checkerboard flooring, vinyl booths—blue instead of red this time, very exciting. The jukebox in this restaurant is brown and cream. 

“Aren’t you going to try it out?”

Dimitri pokes at his chicken-fried steak and shakes his head. “I’m not really in the mood.”

Day 6, 8:16 AM

The tension eventually breaks during the next morning over yet more complimentary breakfast waffles. 

"I can't eat any more of these," Felix announces. He's drenched his waffle in four slabs of butter, but even that doesn't encourage him to actually take another bite. It is now so fat-soaked that, out of a need to make it even vaguely edible again, he has to dab at it with a napkin.

Something about the sight of him wiping butter off of his fingers makes Dimitri crack a smile, albeit a weak one.

"You're in luck. You won't have to eat any more after this one." 

"I'd vomit if I had to." 

Dimitri shakes his head, but at least the smile is more firm on his face now. He pushes at the leftover syrup on his plate from his own waffle. "I'll admit, they're losing their charm for me as well." 

"Really? It really has been a long week then."

Even with the butter removed, it's awful. Felix pushes it away and, instead, picks up an apple so intensely waxed that it reflects his face like a mirror. Dimitri politely takes his rejected plate and starts to upend more syrup all over it, drenching it until the little square wells fill like pools. 

"I have a request," he says, as he picks up his knife to start his sawing again.

"Sure." 

"I'd like for us to not fight anymore. It always makes me upset when we fight." 

Felix takes a bite into his apple, which turns out to be so hard and sour that he nearly spits it back out. 

He's never coming back to New Mexico again. Too many bad associations. 

"That's not a good idea," he says, because there isn't another way to say it. "It's not avoidable. We didn't exactly end on good terms." 

Dimitri doesn't look up from the waffle, but the corners of his mouth fall a little. "I thought we parted on decent terms." 

"We argued every time we talked. All throughout college." The only time they _didn’t_ was during their first years, and that was only because the notion of being long-distance had been so new and disorienting that they didn't even think to argue. 

"Well, yes. But I thought the final talk that we had was good." 

Felix makes a face. The one they had about breaking up? The only thing that he'd say was good about it is that it didn't end with one of them getting too upset and hanging up. In fact—if memory serves him right—it had ended because Dimitri had another call coming in, from the friends that he was going to dinner with that night, about whether he wanted pizza or Indian food. 

"Fine then," he says, because there's nothing worth fighting here. "Agree that even if we are to argue or talk about the breakup during these last few days, we'll keep it to fifteen minutes so it doesn't get out of hand. I'll time it."

Dimitri still looks unhappy.

Felix looks at his watch. 8:20—so, until 8:35. 

Okay. 

He sets down his disgusting apple. "What's wrong?"

It doesn't take long for Dimitri's face to fall, even more, as he starts to speak. "I always feel like you think I'm just overreacting when we talk about this.”

Yes. “Do you want my honest opinion?” 

“I think I can read it on your face, anyway.” 

“I know that you wanted to talk, but I never understood why it had to be so frequent. Didn’t you have other things to do? I never understood if you were just insecure.” And then—it’s embarrassing, but Felix continues, “You know I never even looked at anyone else.” 

Something about this response seems to be simultaneously painful and entertaining for Dimitri to hear. 

“How were we supposed to spend time otherwise? It wasn’t that I was insecure. Or maybe I was...on some days. But I couldn't have known that you were content, you didn’t tell me anything. I could barely even see you since you never came back home during breaks, and you never left school with all of your research and internships. I was just genuinely—I don’t know.” He seems to have lost interest in the final half of Felix’s waffle and settles for deconstructing the leftovers into mush. “I'll admit I read a lot of advice blogs in those years. People say that some couples can make it through long-distance relationships, but they also say some people just aren’t meant to make it.” 

Those words are surprisingly heavy to hear. “You don’t think we were meant to make it,” Felix repeats. 

Dimitri looks up and studies him. 

Felix looks away—grabs the apple again and takes another miserable bite. 

Dimitri looks back down too and resumes his work on destroying food. “There’s no way to be sure, of course,” he says, a little more detached compared to before. “But you—we—this made me—I spent a lot of time feeling very lonely.” 

What is there to say to that? There’s nothing—or at least nothing that comes to his mind. 

He doesn’t try. He stretches out a hand on the table, palm-up, the way he always did when Dimitri was upset and Felix regretted the natural challenge he’s always had in finding words for comfort. 

Dimitri stares at it. He sets down his knife, after a moment, and takes it. 

Day 6, 10:52 AM

Felix never imagined that he could be this excited to see the ‘Welcome to Texas, DRIVE FRIENDLY - THE TEXAS WAY’ sign approach and pass them on the highway. 

He spots Dimitri pulling out his phone to take a picture as it passes by, and assumes that he’ll be sending it to their friends to let them know they’re close. 

“I’ll send it to Ingrid,” Dimitri says, just a moment later. “She’ll be excited to know we’re so close.” 

Day 6, 1:39 PM

“I still remember when we first learned what anniversaries were.”

Dimitri laughs. They're sitting in the parking lot of a Taco Bell, two paper bags of tacos between them. For all of Dimitri's picky eating, it seems he doesn't draw the line at mystery meat. Heavy rain beats down on their windows, leaving little disappearing circles of raindrops and making the air inside the car slightly muggy. 

“You mean in middle school? Our first-anniversary date to the movies?”

It's clear that this laugh is still a little at his expense, but Felix can't blame him. He can accept that if it had been the other way around, he'd be the one making fun of Dimitri every chance he got at bringing barely enough money for one box of candy. 

“It wasn't that bad. You had fun playing in the arcade. You got a temporary tattoo of a snake. I thought it looked cool.”

“Yes. Well, I tried to look like I was having more fun, because _you_ looked like you were going to start crying at any moment.”

“Not true.” 

Dimitri reaches forward and rubs at the corner of Felix's mouth. He pulls his finger away to show the smudge of hot sauce before wiping it on a loose napkin. 

“It's fine. Besides, it's not like the anniversary date that I planned was much better,” Dimitri says.

That memory definitely makes Felix snort. The walk in the park and the picnic afterward had been a sweet idea. Theoretically. “That definitely wasn't. I would say a child not having a concept of money is much better than getting food poisoning from tuna sandwiches.”

“I feel like children shouldn't be held responsible for not knowing about food safety.”

“You were thirteen. You should've at least had a bad feeling.”

Dimitri raises his eyebrows in his ‘who’s to say?’ way. 

It's so unexpected that Felix finds himself snorting. He crumples up the paper from his most recent taco and tosses it into the trash bag by his feet. 

He's reaching for another one—probably his last, given how full he feels—when Dimitri says, just a little quieter, “I was really happy with you, though. For a while. I don't know if you know that, so I wanted to make sure you did.”

He looks up. When their eyes meet, he finds it hard to read Dimitri's expression. 

He hadn't expected this much melancholy from him about this whole arrangement, especially since Dimitri had been the one who decided to call it off. Felix had been braced for a certain breeziness about the scheduled end of their rekindled once-real-but-now-fake-relationship—but that's just his fault for forgetting Dimitri's natural penchant for melancholy. 

“I know,” Felix says, because it only feels appropriate. “That's good.”

“Were you happy with me?” Dimitri asks.

There is a flare of an old irritation in his throat that he has to swallow to keep from surfacing further. Nothing good would come of their conversation if he were to be too honest.17

“Of course. Don't be stupid.”18

_Day 6, 7:34 PM_

_Road trip activity no. 76_

It’s dark, and they’re already late for the rehearsal dinner. As Dimitri drives, Felix sees a large field of what looks like extremely uniform lines of blinking, red dots. They look suspended in the air. 

He leans against the window and looks out. The night outside reflects the gentle blue of the sound system like a mirror, but he can still see the rows of lights beyond the mirage. The window fogs around his nose. 

He thinks about it for a moment longer and can’t figure it out. 

“Do you know what that is?” he asks. 

“Hmm?” 

“Have you not noticed all of the lights around us?”

“Oh. I have. I’ve been trying to think of what they could be. What do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

Dimitri fumbles around the center console for his drink from lunch. Felix picks it up and hands it to him. He takes a loud, delicate sip and then places it back. 

“Maybe they’re buildings? Can you tell if there are shadows around them?”

“It’s too dark.”

“Hmm. I wonder if they’re buildings. Or construction sites?”

Felix pulls out his phone and pulls up his browser. “It’s not buildings.”

“You’re sure?”

Wind turbines. It’s fields of them. In the day, their arms would be visible from a far distance, spinning above in the wide, flat fields. At night, they look like blankets of red stars. Others have asked this question on the internet, too. 

“They’re wind farms,” Felix says. 

It’s dark, but he can tell Dimitri’s eyes brighten just a little. “Wind farms,” he mouths to himself. 

Day 6, 8:22 PM

They had anticipated missing most of the rehearsal, but they hadn’t anticipated missing all of the rehearsal and most of the dinner afterward. As a result, Dimitri turns down the idea of visiting their hotel first to change and instead suggests for them to change in the car. 

This is probably the reason why their attempt at dodging and mixing in—subtly—with the rest of the wedding party does not work. The dinner seems to be winding down already, with most people socializing in groups away from the tables. Used plates and utensils line the lavender tablecloth, and Felix finds that his very first concern, upon entering the room and seeing them there, is that he's going to starve tonight. 

Dimitri heads off to go apologize to Ingrid and Dorothea, while Felix walks to check out what food was served. 

His old college friends find him first.

“You two took long enough,” Linhardt frowns, arms crossed and mushroom skewer in hand. “Ingrid said you’d be late, but we thought you’d get here an hour ago. Plus, your shirt is inside out.” 

He curses and feels at the back of his collar to check. There’s the tag. 

“Is it obvious?”

Caspar makes an _‘ehh’_ noise as he shrugs. “Depends on if you look close enough. I say you’re good, buddy. The lighting here’s pretty dim.” 

Hearing that from Caspar isn’t reassuring. “I’ll go change it in the bathroom.”

“If you say so. How’d you two end up being so late, anyway?” 

“It’s Felix and Dimitri,” a new voice says. Felix turns to see Mercedes standing nearby, smile half-hidden behind her hand. “They’ve been showing up late and disheveled for years now.” 

Felix has the vague feeling that he’s being ganged up on. He decides he doesn’t want to be anymore. 

“I’m going to go change now.” 

“Get your hair, too, while you’re at it,” Caspar says loudly, miming the motions with his hand over his own well-gelled hair. “You look like you just rolled out of bed.” 

“Sure—whatever.” 

He’s halfway out the door when he turns and checks on Dimitri.

Serendipitously, it looks like Dimitri might have been looking for him as well, as their eyes meet over Annette’s shoulder. Dimitri throws him a small fleeting smile and a nod—clearly having figured out what Felix was off to do—before turning back to laugh at something she must have said. 

Day 6, 9:01 PM

Thankfully—after he reorients his shirt in the bathroom—he manages to find enough left at the now-cold buffet to serve himself enough to quiet his stomach. He’s in the middle of sampling the lamb skewers and listening to Dimitri catch up with Sylvain, when Sylvain gasps suddenly in the middle of their conversation. 

“Wow, you finally changed it. I never thought I’d see the day.” 

Dimitri looks puzzled. “Changed what?”

It takes just a moment too long for Felix to realize. 

Dimitri had taken out his phone to check for messages. 

He snatches the phone out of Dimitri’s hands and shoves it into his own pocket, but Sylvain already has his big, damn mouth open. 

“You changed that old picture of Felix and Bella that you always had set as your wallpaper.”19

“It’s not that big of a deal,” Felix says. 

“No, it definitely is. Dimitri seems to agree.” 

Dimitri—who had looked deeply startled when Sylvain pointed it out—has since smoothed out his expression. 

“I’m just a little embarrassed,” he says. “I didn’t realize it was that notable that my phone background was that picture.” 

“Oh trust me, it’s notable,” Sylvain says, dismissively. He’s starting to crane his neck, scanning the crowd. “I have to tell Ingrid.” 

“Sylvain—”

Felix cuts in. “Stop. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

Dimitri continues, “And I don’t know if she’ll care, she _is_ getting married tomorrow. I feel she may have bigger concerns.”

Sylvain waves them both off. “Trust me, she’ll care. Ingrid doesn’t forget bets.” He stops, suddenly—his eyes brighten and he leans up further, cupping his hands around his mouth, bellowing, _“Ingrid!”_

They watch him dart away, past a sea of people. 

“This’ll be fine,” Felix mutters, more to convince himself than anything else. “He just thinks it’s something stupid. He doesn’t actually know.”

“Right,” Dimitri says. He’s started to chew on his bottom lip, in the way that he does when he’s nervous. “Right.” 

Day 6, 10:54 PM

They’re at the rehearsal dinner for under an hour, but even that is enough to make Felix want to throw himself into bed and to sleep indefinitely. 

As all of the wedding guests are checked into the same hotel, it’s natural that they have to stay in the same room to keep up the pretenses. Unlike the ordeal back at Flagstaff, however, Felix is much too tired—physically and emotionally—to even feel anything about it. 

Dimitri seems to be in the same boat. After they’d unlocked their rooms and pulled in their bags, he immediately flopped himself, face-down, onto the bed. 

Felix nudges him with a foot. “Brush your teeth first.” 

“Mmmpgh.” 

Clearly he was being too gentle. He pulls his leg back and delivers a more solid kick this time. 

“Come on. I want to sleep, too.”

Dimitri sighs and rises again, shuffling over to dig his toiletries bag out, and then heading into the bathroom. As the sink tap turns on, Felix hears him saying, “I understand that this is going to be nothing compared to the length of tomorrow, but I’m already so tired.” 

“I know.” A question comes to mind—he considers whether or not to ask, and then decides that it doesn’t matter either way. “Do you think we’re doing fine, so far?” 

Dimitri peeks out of the bathroom, toothbrush in his mouth. His response is extremely garbled by foam, but Felix understands him to say, “I think we’re fine.” 

“Okay, good. Because Sylvain seemed suspicious.”

Dimitri responds with something in the rough vicinity of, “Sylvain was always the biggest concern, but I think he just wanted to poke fun at me.” He pauses to think, and then continues, “Ingrid probably would have noticed, too, if only she wasn’t so consumed with the wedding.”

“Okay. We’ll be fine, then.” 

They swap. By the time that Felix has finished cleaning up and changed and slid under the covers, Dimitri is already in bed as well, plugging his phone in to charge. When Felix nudges him, he turns off the light. 

This hotel is more expensive than all of the previous ones they’d stayed at and has very good sound isolation. The result is that everything sounds deadly silent—so quiet that all Felix can hear is the softest ringing in his own ears and the sound of the covers shifting around them.

He turns, and notices Dimitri staring. 

“What?” he asks. 

Dimitri gives him a small smile. He looks distracted. “I think this is the first time that I’ve felt like we were so close to being done. Not that I haven’t had fun—but it’s been tiring for you, too, hasn’t it?”

Something about the darkness must be making him more honest, because he thinks he’s smiling back. 

“The part where we’re driving eight hours a day, or the part where I have to be in a car with my ex and take a bunch of pictures while pretending like we’re still together?” 

This makes Dimitri laugh. “Oh, probably a bit of both.” He pauses and turns back up to the ceiling. The darkness shifts in patterns over his face, from the streetlamps outside. “I really wonder how they’ll react when we tell them the truth next month.” 

“There’s no way to tell. They’re weird.” 

“I think that they may be okay with it. I feel like there’s a chance that they already saw it coming. We had been together for a very, very long time.”

Felix shrugs, and burrows further under the covers. “I don’t know how that has to do with anything. You think we’re more likely to break up because we were together for a long time?”

“Perhaps. I think high school sweethearts are a little more common, but elementary school sweethearts—”

Just the sound of it is stupid. Felix, against his will, laughs. 

“Elementary school sweethearts are doomed to fail?” 

“Well,” Dimitri says, in that voice that implies ‘yes’ without verbalizing it. 

He falls silent for so long that Felix thinks he’s gone to sleep—feels himself drifting off to sleep—before he hears, “But elementary school sweethearts make for good lifelong friends, don’t they?” 

The way he says it sounds wistful. Felix reaches to find his hand under the covers, just for a few reassuring pats, before he finally falls asleep. 

Day 7, 11:52 AM

Maybe as a consequence of driving nearly forty hours over the past six days, Felix drags himself to the venue feeling like his limbs are barely attached to his body. 

Dimitri makes sure they clean up well this time and don’t look like they spend most of their days greasy and sweaty and with chip dustings on their fingers from road trip snacks. They’re up early to shower and iron their pants and jackets, dry and tie back their hair, change into shirts and re-change into new shirts after Felix drops jam onto his first one, slip on their shoes while confirming what they do and don’t have to bring for the ceremony, and then are out the door and at the venue eight minutes early. 

The ceremony is held in the botanical garden, tucked away in a little corner under an old, knotty oak tree and by one of the man-made brooks. Given that it’s a relatively small wedding of under fifty people, the chairs are stacked in four neat rows, separated by the aisle in the middle. The clouds are heavy and low-sitting, but it doesn't seem like it's going to rain. 

“It’s fine, anyway, even if it does,” Claude says, from where he’s turned around from the aisle in front of them. “We’ll only be out here for an hour-and-a-half max, I’m willing to bet.” 

Dimitri is still alert enough to nod along in agreement as Claude talks. Felix, on the other hand, can only stare at them bleakly and marvel at where their energy comes from. 

Day 7, 12:45 PM

The ceremony passes in a blur—not because of exhaustion, as something in Felix’s body seems to have snapped awake the moment he saw Dorothea and Ingrid walk down the aisle, arms locked and radiant—but more because he feels himself growing much more emotional than he originally anticipated.

Though he hadn’t known Dorothea until he was in college, seeing her in the classic white dress, hair bound up and pinned back with white butterflies and pearls, does make him stare. 

Seeing Ingrid, though, makes his heart stop. He hadn’t seen her smile that wide since they were tiny and playing on the trampoline in his backyard, when she was telling him about all of the Mario-themed Happy Meal toys she’d collected over the summer. For the wedding, she braided up her hair like a crown around her head, with tiny white and blue flowers tucked in the plaits. Her dress is shorter, clipped at her knees, with lace flowers sewn in as detailing, and there is a corsage of roses on her wrist.

When they reach the wedding arch, they turn to face each other. Edelgard, officiating with what Felix learns later is an ordination acquired through a five-minute internet search and form-filling session, smiles at them both before raising a mic to her lips. 

“Welcome—dear friends and close family—to all that are joining us on this beautiful day in celebration of the marriage and love between Ingrid Brandl Galatea and Dorothea Arnault.”

The words are like a cold shock to his system. Somewhere along the line, he thinks he may have forgotten that their trip was supposed to end somewhere, and that the somewhere was supposed to be something meaningful and significant. 

“Ingrid’s getting married,” he feels, more than hears himself say. 

Dimitri turns to look at him, and his face softens. He plays his part perfectly—leans over and presses a kiss to Felix’s forehead. 

Day 7, 3:05 PM

The ceremony passes in a rush. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it turns out Edelgard makes for a very efficient, yet warm, officiant. There is a rush of celebration following the ring exchange and the kiss—a chaotic roar of clapping and cheering—before everyone is rushed away to the reception, held in a repurposed greenhouse on the grounds. 

Cocktail hour comes first—during which Felix watches everyone’s slow descent into a level of celebration that can only be achieved with a certain level of drunkenness. There’s chaos as he’s dragged around to meet all of Dimitri’s college friends, and, as he is duty-bound by norms of reciprocity, as he drags Dimitri to meet his. 

Dimitri, it turns out, has collected an eclectic bunch of friends. Felix had already known and met Claude and Leonie once before, but Lorenz is an experience in himself. Hilda and Marianne are understandable separately and very confusing when together. Small talk with Dorothea’s side of the wedding proves to be less painful than he’d previously anticipated. There are quite a few that Felix knows from school—Caspar and Linhardt, Bernadetta, Petra—but there are also ones that he doesn’t.

“Oh, then it must have been tense at work recently,” Dimitri says, after they just finished listening to a very piecemeal explanation of Hubert’s occupation, which they later conclude sounds suspiciously fraudulent. “With how weak the dollar has been.” 

Hubert looks utterly bored by his comment. He’s dressed neatly in a white dress shirt and black trousers, and reminds Felix of evil, rich socialites from old Hollywood movies. 

“It’s only difficult for the ones that don’t know how to play.” He smiles, disingenuously.

Dimitri doesn’t bite. “I see,” he says. 

After a few more lukewarm exchanges—in which it becomes painfully clear that Dimitri’s knowledge of the ‘strength of the dollar’ is limited to what he had gleaned from six days of NPR shows—Hubert loses interest in them and drifts off for canapés.

“He’s weird,” Felix says, as they watch him pick up a goat cheese-loaded cracker.

“Extremely unsettling. Let’s hope that his table is on the other end of the room.” 

“What, you think he’ll do something?” 

“No, I’m sure all of Dorothea’s friends are lovely people.” A waiter passes by them with a tray, who Felix flags down. Something weird loaded onto a cucumber disk. He shakes his head, but Dimitri grabs one and smiles. “Besides, he doesn’t look the type to act, does he? He seems more like the type to brood in the shadows.”

“Don’t know about that. I think he could stab someone.” 

“He wouldn’t,” Dimitri says. He takes a bite of the canapé, makes a face, and squishes it into a napkin. “Why would a man prepared to stab someone wear white?”

“Bleach.”

“The smell is too incriminating. Poison is much harder to detect.” 

“Try being a little less confident when you respond, murderer,” Felix says, which makes Dimitri snort. 

Day 7, 4:36 PM

The first dances. He most definitely does not get misty-eyed while watching Ingrid dance with her mother, then her father, and then with Dorothea—in the same way that Dimitri most definitely doesn’t laugh when he notices. 

“Stop,” he mutters, snatching the napkin that Dimitri offered with a little more terseness than the situation necessarily calls for.

When the dance floor is opened to everyone else for a series of slow dances before the more upbeat songs are put on, they do their duty and step up for one dance. 

Up this close, he can smell Dimitri’s cologne, strong where he’d dabbed it against his neck. It’s the same scent that he’s used since high school. The smell is quite soothing, but Felix does notice that it’s making his mind slip away.

“Try not to stomp on my feet,” he mutters, to recenter himself. 

Dimitri laughs and dips his head to respond, quiet by Felix’s ear, “Have I ever?” 

Day 7, 7:47 PM

“What time is it?”

Felix checks his watch. “7:47,” he replies. 

“Oh, thank goodness. Fifteen more minutes,” Dorothea sighs, and then sinks down into an empty chair at his side. “Is this yours?”

She’s gesturing at a half-empty flute of champagne sitting on the table, surrounded by confetti curls and gold baubles that had once been placed neatly, but now looks like the flotsam of a reception in its closing hour. 

Felix shakes his head. She looks at it again, seems to think to herself for a moment, and then grabs it anyway.

“Having fun?” he asks, as he watches her down it in one gulp. “That’s dramatic. I thought you were into parties.”

“Sure I was—back in college, before I started realizing the hangover was never worth it.”

Funny. And he had thought she lived for it—why would he think otherwise, when she spent all of their sophomore year stumbling back into the suite drunk and singing Les Mis? 

She leans back and shakes her feet slightly, loosening her heels enough to where she can swing them around by her toes. 

“And what did you think of it, Mr. Hardass?”

Felix makes a face at the name, which she ignores. “It was nice. Less nice when Ferdinand started interpretive dancing.”

Dorothea sighs. “Right. Well, that’s what we get for having an open bar. Don’t worry about him.”

“I never do,” he says, honest. She laughs, and he continues, “I liked the ceremony. You two looked happy.”

She sighs again, but it has a different tone—more content, less drama. 

“The reception was nice, of course—and it was nice finally meeting Dimitri, after all your talk about him. Very cute. But all I really wanted was the ceremony.”

She smiles in a way that makes a lump rise to his throat. Around them, people are starting to gather away from the bars and dance floors to the exit of the banquet hall with sparklers in hand, for the send-off. He sees Ingrid starting to make her way over. 

“Congratulations. I hope you two stay happy for a long time.”

“Thanks."

Day 7, 8:21 PM

The BMW is much more lively with Ingrid and Dorothea in the backseat. 

“What’s the time difference between here and Barcelona?” Felix asks. “Will you even be able to do anything, or will you just be jet-lagged for the two weeks?”

“They’re seven hours ahead,” Dorothea says. She has her legs crossed and Ingrid’s hand smoothed between hers, playing with her engagement and wedding rings. They’d both changed into more comfortable clothes for the plane ride—out of the dresses and into sweaters and leggings.

“It’ll take a while to get used to,” Ingrid admits. 

“Well, we can just find something exciting to do every time one of us gets sleepy. As long as we don’t nap, we’ll come around in no time.”

“Felix’s family went to Norway once,” Dimitri says. “I remember him complaining about the jet lag.”

“That’s because I didn’t have anything interesting to do,” Felix mutters. “It was a business trip that my parents called a family trip to drag us along.”

“I thought you said it was nice, though? Didn’t you get to see the Northern Lights?”

“Oh, but you can see the Northern Lights from the Americas, too,” Dorothea laughs. “I heard all you had to do was go further north. It’ll spare you the jet lag.”

“Felix just has a tendency to complain, don’t mind him,” Ingrid says. 

Felix wrinkles his brow and opens his mouth to engage, but is stopped when Dimitri takes a hand off the wheel to lay over his knuckles. When Felix looks over, Dimitri makes a face that can only be read as _‘We are literally driving them to the airport for their honeymoon, do not start anything in this car.’_

Fortunately, Dorothea changes the subject. “How was the week for you two?” she asks, an edge of mischief in her tone. 

A plethora of responses immediately run through Felix’s mind, but he’s not sure she’d appreciate any of them. 

“It was very fun. We had such a wonderful time, thank you so much for planning that out for us,” Dimitri responds in his stead, and the open grin he throws them through the rearview mirror does look genuine. “Have you had a chance to look at our photographs yet?”

“I’ve seen Caspar and Linhardt’s, but not yours yet,” Dorothea says. 

“I’ve taken a peek,” Ingrid adds. 

Dorothea turns to her in interest. 

“Oh, you did? How were they?”

Ingrid laughs once, a short bark. “They were really, really nice. I liked the one with Felix at the coin pusher.”

The only photo they took in the casinos, and only because they knew that it was expected they'd provide at least one. Felix, to be fair, will admit that he had gotten slightly enamored by the coin pusher, sitting there for a good amount of time—though nothing remotely close to the hour that Dimitri claims. Dimitri retells that story for them, and gets a few laughs. 

“You should tell them about the ‘slotty’ shirt,” Felix says, just to get them to talk about something else. 

“The _what_ shirt?” 

Just the reminder makes Dimitri laugh again. That story is also retold—this time to even louder laughter. 

“I don’t have a picture of it in the Polaroids, but Felix took a few with his phone when I tried it on later.”

“Felix, you have to show us,” Ingrid orders, leaning forward into the space between the front seats. “This is important.”

Felix shrugs and pulls out his phone, but stops when he realizes they’ve just entered the airport loop. 

“I’ll send it to you,” he says, tucking his phone back into his pocket. 

“Okay, but don’t forget.”

“Just remind me if I do.”

There are quite a few people being dropped off at various stopping points along the Departures gates, and it takes a while before they find the right entrance. Once they do, there’s a quick rush to get out and unload the suitcases before they’re hurried along by the security guards. 

“Bye,” Ingrid says, throwing her arms around each of them in turn. “Thanks so much for driving us.”

“Of course. It makes for a nice conclusion to our trip, too.”

“Good. I was worried you’d already be so tired from driving all the way down.”

“Not at all, we took turns,” Dimitri says, hand on her shoulder in reassurance. “It’s been an amazing week. Have fun in Barcelona—we expect to see pictures when you come back.”

Dorothea and Ingrid grab their suitcase handles and start to walk off to the glass doors, stopping to wave behind them just a few times. Felix raises his hand and waves back—sees Dimitri do it too—until their silhouettes are lost to the crowd, swallowed by all of the other colorful bodies. 

The moment they disappear, he feels something quiet settle into his head. 

They did it. No weddings ruined, and nobody any the wiser. 

Felix drops his hand. “Alright,” he says. 

Dimitri nods in agreement. “Alright.”

Day 7, 8:43 PM

There’s a diner by the airport. Dimitri finds it last minute, right before they’re shooed out of the Departures drop-off for being there too long. 

He can tell, even from the outside, that this one is much larger than any of the others. When they walk in, a little bell above the door jingles. It’s surprisingly packed with people, despite being so late. The air smells almost sticky from the syrup. 

There are wallboxes at each booth—little silver jukeboxes with pages and pages of song titles behind a glass, with neat red buttons for song selections. There isn’t even a question of whether or not they work. He could tell, even from the moment he walked in, that different tables had different songs playing. 

Dimitri immediately starts flipping through the songs at their table. 

Felix doesn’t sit down with nearly the same amount of energy. He shrugs off and folds his blazer. “Are you hungry? I can’t eat anything else.” 

“Something sweet, perhaps?” Dimitri mumbles, his brow furrowing as he continues to play with the jukebox. 

“A milkshake?”

“That would be nice. I don’t know if I can finish a full one, though, I had so many fruit tarts.”

Felix orders one chocolate milkshake and sits back to watch Dimitri look increasingly confused with every moment he flips through the jukebox songbook. 

“What? Do you need a quarter?”

A moment longer, and then Dimitri finally sits back. He stares at it for a moment longer, as if waiting for something to change—and then looks up. 

“So it appears,” he announces, “This jukebox only plays Britney Spears songs.”

Felix presses his mouth into a thin line. He had thought there was a lot of Britney Spears playing in the background, from the moment they walked in, but he didn’t realize this could be the reason. 

“Okay,” he says. “Is that a problem?”

Dimitri furrows his brow. 

“Um, I think I was just expecting something different. Maybe something a little more retro than the late nineties.”

“Do you even know any fifties or sixties songs?”

“I know ‘Mr. Sandman’. And ‘Hound Dog’.”

A waitress arrives with their milkshake. It comes in an old glass, complete with a maraschino cherry, a mountain of whipped cream, and two pink-striped straws. It sits on a neat little napkin. 

“Well, just pick the Britney Spears equivalent of ‘Mr. Sandman’.”

“Okay,” Dimitri says, as he plucks the cherry off the top. “Would you say that’s more ‘Toxic’ or ‘Womanizer’?”

Felix takes a sip of the milkshake to hide his smile. It’s way too sweet, but at least the chocolate doesn’t taste like powder. 

“You’re the expert.”

“Then ‘Womanizer,’ I think.”

In an act of both loathing and love from the universe, the jukebox works perfectly. 

“Are you satisfied?” Felix asks, after the first chorus has passed. 

“I’ve made my peace with it,” Dimitri says. 

Day 7, 9:06 PM

They don’t stay for too long—just enough to discuss the life updates they got from their old friends back home, their impressions of the other guests, Dorothea and Ingrid, and which of the food was their favorite. 

At the end, Dimitri pulls his straw out of the glass and raises it, chocolate end dripping towards Felix. 

“I'd like to propose a final toast to us, for our success this week,” he says. “I think we pulled off something that we’ll look back on later and be proud of.”

Felix rolls his eyes. He raises his straw as well. 

“To reaching the end,” he says. “And not tearing each other’s heads off.”

Dimitri’s smile falters—only a fraction of a second—before its back.

“To reaching the end.”

Their straws tap over the glass.

Day 7, 11:59 AM

He’s in bed, on his side, looking at the time on his phone. The hotel room is already cleared of Dimitri’s stuff—he’s left his car in the airport lot and caught a red-eye to Los Angeles with Edelgard, as a brief sibling bonding trip. They’re already supposed to be in the air. 

As he watches, the day ends.

He looks at it with relative apathy. He’d expected to feel some great shift or some deep sadness, but none of that comes.20

When the clock turns 12:01, he puts his phone down and goes to sleep. 

t

Day 39, 2:53 PM

About a month after the wedding, the news finally breaks. The first one to reach him is—unsurprisingly—Sylvain. 

Felix is in the middle of an interview day at Baylor when he receives the first call, after which he silences his phone. After receiving another four rapid-fire, he excuses himself to go yell at Sylvain in the bathroom. 

Unfortunately, it seems like Sylvain had the same idea.

“I knew something was wrong!”

For everything that Felix had expected to hear from him—pity, light teasing—this wasn’t one that he had in mind. A cold sweat beads against his arms.

“What are you talking about?” he asks, doing his best to sound as deadpan as possible. He crosses his left arm around his torso and leans against the paper towel dispenser. 

“I knew you two were up to something during Ingrid’s wedding. I didn’t want to push you at the time, because it was her wedding—I mean, I’m not a monster—but I knew it. Your vibes were all off.”

“My _vibes?”_

Sylvain runs over him easily. “I just heard from Annie that you two broke up. Which—don’t get me wrong, I’m sorry, and all that—but she says that Dimitri told her you two _just_ broke up. Is that true?”

“Yeah,” Felix lies.

There’s a brief pause of silence on the line. 

“I don’t believe it,” Sylvain says. 

Felix can tell, by the tone of his voice, that he’s resolute. It makes him clench his jaw. This one won’t be easy. 

“What the hell are you saying?”

“I’m saying I think you two were already broken up at the time of the wedding.” 

What the fuck. 

“What’s wrong with you? Why is that the first thing you say to someone that’s just ended a—a—” He has to take a pause to count.

“A twelve-year relationship,” Sylvain answers, cutting in. “And I’m only saying this because I’m positive I’m right, so I know I’m not hurting your feelings.”

“Don’t be an idiot.” 

“No, I’m not being an idiot. I’m being serious. If what I think is right and you and Dimitri—I don’t know what the hell you two did—lie? Can that even be considered a lie? Faking? Faking being together for the wedding? Then you two are the real idiots.” 

“We weren’t faking anything, what’s wrong with you?” Felix wracks his brain for a counterattack. “Is this just because of the stupid phone background?” 

Sylvain laughs, sharp. “No. That was a little surprising, I’ll admit it, but mostly I just wanted to give Dimitri grief.”

“Okay. Then you should probably know what you’re talking about before you start making up shit like this.” 

“Oh, trust me, I know what I’m talking about.” There’s another pause, and Felix is in the middle of considering hanging up and dealing with this later when Sylvain continues, “I don’t know. There’s not—like—one moment I can point to that I figured it out. But that weekend, you two just didn’t look like you were in love anymore.” 

Felix’s mouth runs dry. “What?” 

“How do I—okay, this is going to sound stupid, but I promise you I’m being honest. You just didn’t look comfortable. I mean, I saw you at that rehearsal dinner and during that wedding and, I don’t know, it’s not like you did anything in particular—but I know you. And you looked like you were trying too hard. I didn’t want to assume anything at the time, so I just thought you were having a rough time with med school apps, but now that I know you two broke up, this makes way more sense.”

He should have hung up earlier. He’d managed to avoid thinking about the breakup ever since he last left Austin, so he’s not sure why he thought it would be a good time to discuss it now—with Sylvain and his very unique brand of stubbornness, all while in the middle of a day that he's supposed to prove he functions well. 

Now that it’s being raised to the surface again, he’s feeling that familiar lump in his throat and solidity in his chest, as if it was being filled with concrete. 

“Plus, he didn’t look for you. He always used to look for you in crowds, like he was just checking to make sure you’re okay. I think he still looked a few times, but it almost looked like—I don’t know. Like he was looking out of nervousness, and not for any other reason.” 

“Okay, you can stop now.”

There must be something to his voice that throws off Sylvain, because he actually listens.

Felix turns to look in the mirror. His face is pale and he can tell, through how quickly his chest is rising and falling, that he’s starting to get unnecessarily emotional. 

“Are you admitting to it?” Sylvain asks. 

“Yes. Sure. Whatever. Don’t tell Ingrid.”

“Of course I won’t. I mean, she’ll find out in a while, but she probably won’t feel as guilty if she found out like...a year later. But don’t worry. I didn’t even tell Annette. I’ll play dumb with Dimitri too, okay?” 

“Yes, thank you.” 

There’s a bang as the door opens and someone walks in—another interviewee—who looks taken aback once he sees Felix. 

He very, very suddenly needs fresh air. 

He takes the call out of the bathroom, out of the building, and starts down a random path outside of the building. Baylor is situated very closely in the city, nestled alongside many other hospitals and care centers, and he starts a walk randomly down the road past the row of them. Sylvain had stayed quiet throughout this entire time, which he’s grateful for. 

“You can ask questions,” Felix finally says, when he imagines Sylvain is just about ready to burst. “I know you have questions.” 

“Trust me, I don’t even know what my questions are. I still don’t get it. Did it suck?” 

The simplicity of the question makes Felix snort. “What, the week?”

“Yeah.”

“Yes, it sucked.” It was nice, it was fun, it was the first time he’d spent anything over a few hours with Dimitri over the course of the last five years, ever since they started college on opposite ends of the country—and it really, really sucked. 

“Pretty much what I expected. Just thinking about it now—ugh. I just can’t imagine why you felt like you needed to do this. What even happened?”

His response comes automatically, without thinking. He’s heard variations of these words come from Dimitri’s mouth in the past, but never from his own.

“We just weren’t good at long-distance. He wanted me to text him like every hour of every day, and I didn’t have the time or energy for it. We haven’t been okay since high school, so we just ended up calling it off. It was just shitty luck that we called it off the day before Ingrid and Dorothea made their announcement. Dimitri said that he didn't want to raise a fuss about it and direct attention onto us, so we just decided to tell you all later once the wedding was over.”

“But you still could have told _them,_ at least. A heads-up wouldn’t have hurt them—well, okay, it might have made things kind of awkward, but still—God, you two spent every day of a whole week together.” 

“Dimitri didn’t want to tell them,” Felix says. He’s walking by some fancy, glass-walled buildings, and hopes that the navigation app on his phone is enough to get him back to his interviews after this. “He said they already had enough to worry about. You know Ingrid would have been upset.”

“Well, yeah, only because you two have been together since the beginning of time. But she would have gotten over it.” 

“Maybe. To be fair, we didn’t think they’d plan a whole road trip for us. We thought we’d just have to show up to the wedding.” 

“Yeah, um—” Sylvain sounds a little embarrassed all of a sudden “That might have been my fault, at least a bit.”

“...What.”

“And Annie and Dedue. And, yeah, Ingrid and Dorothea. I mean—we thought we were doing something nice at the time, I guess. We thought you two couldn’t spend time together because you didn’t have the time to plan anything so we just—yeah, um. Did it for you?”

For some reason, this final piece of news is just a little too much to handle. 

“I’m going to kill you,” Felix says, calmly. 

“Excuse me, I did that out of the kindness of my own heart.” 

“I’m going to confiscate your Vegas souvenir.”

“The titty shotglass? Yeah, I actually broke that already.” 

Felix has to consciously restrain himself from throwing his phone. He can hear Sylvain laughing to himself, quietly, from the other end of the line—which ends, after a moment, in a big sigh.

“I can’t believe you two are done. I always thought you'd die together.” 

"You mean grow old together."

“You know what I mean. Isn’t he the reason you even wanted to be a doctor in the first place? Because his first crush was Patrick Dempsey from Grey’s Anatomy?”

Felix can feel his neck getting hot. He thanks the universe that Sylvain isn’t physically here to see it. 

“Derek Shepherd was a neurosurgeon.”

“Isn’t that what you want to be?”

“I want to be a neurologist.” Though if he ends up enjoying his surgery rotation? Who knows. 

“I don’t know what to tell you. They literally sound the same to me.”

“I’m really going to kill you,” Felix repeats.

“Don’t you have to take an oath? An oath to try not to kill people?” 

“Sylvain.” 

Another quiet cackle. He’s glad that he can provide Sylvain with so much entertainment. What a cold-blooded asshole. 

“Okay, but really, Felix. I’m sorry things had to end for you two, especially like this.” 

He shakes his head. What was it that Dimitri had said? 

“Some people just aren’t meant to make it.” 

Sylvain surprises him by snorting. 

“Oh, that’s bullshit.” 

He rolls his eyes. “What? We didn’t try hard enough for you?” 

“Well, I didn’t say that. I don’t know anything about how hard you two had it, but I do know that’s a pretty bad excuse. Saying that you just weren’t meant to ‘make it.’ You both chose to try for a while, and then you chose to stop, that’s all it is. And, I stress, that’s fine—again, I know that I don’t know what it was like. But don’t blame it on fate. That’s just depressing.” 

He says it with such conviction that it makes Felix smile—just a little. 

“Okay. Sure, whatever. We just stopped trying.”

“Yeah. Which—” He breaks, again, into another sigh. “Really sucks. But you two know each other best. This wedding thing was really masochistic and just plain unnecessary but—I mean. You’ll both be who you need to be and get where you need to go.”

“Really. And where are we going?” 

“I don’t know. Isn’t he already going to New York City for grad school next year? You just go wherever your heart takes you.”21

Day 267, 4:27 PM

There is a small ping that sounds from a phone, which immediately lights up from its place on a table.

Against the background of the Shoshone falls, a single text sits in its little notification rectangle—

‘ _just got an acceptance from nyu med. i think i’ll take it_ ’

Day 455, 7:20 PM

“No, he didn't,” Felix says, shaking his head.

“Why would I make it up?”

“No idea.”

“People do have pet ferrets, even if you haven't seen them yourself. They sell them in pet stores. Doesn't that imply there's a market?”

Felix rolls his eyes. There's someone else coming their way on the sidewalk, and he has to fall behind Dimitri until they pass. Afterward, he jogs back up to keep pace again.

“And one climbed all over you, sure.”

“Felix,” Dimitri says, his expression desperate from where it pokes over a paper bag of bread, chips, and dip—a companion to the one that Felix is carrying, of eggs, apples, and almond milk. “It climbed up my shirt, and then into it. And it had claws—I can still show you the scratches.”

“No thanks, I believe you. Why did he bring out his ferret on the first date?”

Dimitri shrugs. “I don't know, but I did let him know that it was unsettling. I thought that feedback would help him in future dates. And I think I wouldn't have minded if it was a well-trained ferret, you know—”

“Sure.”

“—Because it was very cute, and it had a very little face. I did appreciate it before it started to climb me. His name was Theodore.”

They turn the corner and step onto Felix's block. The scent of grilled onions wafts over from the hot dog truck just outside of his building, making his mouth water—as it does, every single day.

Felix unlocks the gate and props the door open with his foot. “And you told Theodore that he should train his ferret better?”

“Oh. No, Theodore is the ferret's name. My date's name is Manny.”

He isn't sure if he feels pity or judgment for Dimitri in this moment, but does hope that the full extent of whichever it is doesn't show when he says, seriously, “Maybe you shouldn't go on dates with people named Manny.”

Dimitri sets his jaw. “Felix, there's no reason to not give someone a chance because of their name—”

“Maybe there is, if you've only talked to them for three days before deciding to go over to their house. To meet their ferret.”

Dimitri makes a face, but doesn't argue back otherwise. In the opening, he motions for Dimitri to pass over the other bags. It takes them a moment to reorient both of the bags in his arms so that nothing falls, and even then it’s slightly precarious. He wishes this wasn’t the closest market to his apartment, or that he wasn’t so tired after a full day of didactics. He doesn’t know how much longer he can afford such expensive eggs. 

It's getting late, and he still has some studying to catch up on.

He nods to Dimitri. "Thanks for the help." 

"Oh, of course," Dimitri says, smiling. "Anytime. Would you still like to go to brunch this Sunday?” 

He has block exams on this upcoming Monday, but that’ll just mean he’ll have to spend a few extra hours studying on Saturday. Outings with Dimitri always run longer than they plan for them to. It’s a very particular curse. 

“I can't stay too long,” he says, “But yes. Ten?”

“Ten.” Dimitri nods. 

A moment passes.

He doesn’t make any move to leave. 

Felix stares at him. This is unusual—between the two of them, Felix isn’t ashamed to admit that he’s typically the one that can’t read social cues. 

He’s in the middle of wondering if he needs to make a point of saying that he’s going to go upstairs and unpack his groceries before his eggs go bad—

When Dimitri bends down and gives him a quick kiss on the cheek. 

Both of his grocery bags crash to the ground. There is a delightful crack as five of his twelve eggs meet pavement and splatter everywhere.

“Oh my God,” Dimitri says, jumping back in time to only get a bit of one yolk on his shoe. 

Felix looks down. 

That’s easily a dollar lost. His brain, working very sluggishly, does manage to confirm that he has at least enough eggs for the rest of the week, if he only eats one per day. 

Dimitri bends down, bright red, as he starts to recollect the groceries. 

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize I would startle you so much—or, um—not enough for you to drop everything—”

There’s a loud tearing noise. That, along with the sight of Dimitri tearing one of the bags from shoving in a jar of salsa too hard, jolts him back to his senses.

“What the hell?” he finally asks, maybe in a tone that is a little more confrontational than necessary. He bends down as well, helping collect everything as neatly as possible in the other bag. He’s disappointed to note that his hands are shaking and smeared with raw egg. “What was that about?” 

“Um,” Dimitri says. His face is now so red that Felix thinks he might be starting to turn purple. “I’m sorry. I was only thinking that you look lovely in the streetlight—”

The way that he says that makes Felix want to throw everything on the ground again.

Still—he refrains, which he hopes is a good sign for his future patients. 

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. 

“Get it together,” he mutters. He’s proud—his voice is quite even. “You can’t do things like that again unless you mean it.”

Dimitri picks up the bread, which is now squashed into a right angle. “Out of curiosity, how would you respond if I said that I meant it?”

Felix narrows his eyes and stops helping. He watches as Dimitri continues to re-pack individual apples back into a paper bag and avoid eye contact.

“Is this you saying you want to try again?” he finally asks. He’s well aware that he sounds a little dubious, but he can’t help it. “One year after you broke up with me for being too distant, that you spend off dating random ferret people, you want to try again?” 

Dimitri coughs—which is also interesting, because Felix always recalled him being much more eloquent when it came to things like this. 

“You did say that I should stop seeing people named Manny,” he says, shy, as he stands up with the bags and passes them back. “I tried seeing someone named Felix for a while, and that was pretty nice.” 

“I’m not getting distracted by this fancy—stop.” He tries waving around his arms, which would be a little more effective if he wasn’t trying to rebalance two now-torn, mud-streaked bags. “Are you serious? You want to try this again? Yes or no?” 

“I’ve missed you so much, and I’ve loved spending this year with you here. I think you’re right—or at least what Sylvain said was right, the part about trying. To be honest, I still don’t know if I would be willing to try this if you told me that we have to do long-distance again, but—”

Felix closes his eyes and shakes his head. They don’t have to do long-distance. They’re not stupid enough to make the same mistake twice—but he can’t stand the uncertainty. He’s not ready to start hoping again for no reason.

“Stop. Just yes or no, Dimitri,” he repeats. 

"What would you say if I said yes?"

"I wasn't the one that ended it first time. You know what I would say."

He can hear a quiet exhale. "Still?"

Felix feels his face growing hot again.

"Yes. Or no."

When he opens his eyes this time, there is a soft, tentative smile on Dimitri’s face. It’s one that he’d seen many times before, but hadn’t seen in many, many years.

Fuck, there it is.

“Yes. Let’s try again.”22

* * *

>   1. The openers for your typical modern romantic comedies are fast-paced, nonsensical, and structured to be obvious from a mile away. This, of course, is not a coincidence. Their purpose is to launch you into the shiny protagonist that you’re strapped in to follow for the next hour-and-a-half.  
>    
>  This is how it will be done. There is a good chance—no matter the protagonist you are about to be fed—that you are about to receive a fast, anxiety-inducing montage. You will follow them through waking up, running out of an apartment late, nearly crashing into a bicyclist, answering a call from their best friend about how they know they’re late and they’ll be there “in fifteen,” bumping into a stranger and spilling coffee on themselves, almost getting hit by a car, which then honks angrily at them, etc. etc.  
>    
>  When you make it through this sequence, you’re rewarded with a calm. Suddenly, everything in your protagonist’s life is in order. Things will seem manageable, but only for a brief moment. Little do you know, this is the last moment of peace you will have before the inevitable collision of your protagonist with their love interest—which, of course, will set off the rest of the movie like an elementary school volcano project.  
>    
>  Point being, notice how this story is not fast-paced, exciting, or even remotely happy. Notice how the “love interest” (quotations necessary) is already present, standing awkwardly in the doorway of a musty motel room and trying hard to not stare at the single bed that you’d think he’d be more than interested in sharing with the protagonist. Theoretically. This can be explained.[ ▲ ]
>   
> 
>   2. It’s important to acknowledge that nothing that screams romcom more than a wedding plot. And sure, weddings can be happy and special, but the problem with romcom weddings—and the problem with romcoms in general—lies in how ridiculously contrived everything is.  
>    
>  This story is exactly like that, since your protagonist and your love interest are on this weird, forced road trip that neither of them actually wants to go on, not when they could have easily taken a flight to Austin instead and saved the many days of driving and taking photos for the wedding scrapbook, which is also not a thing that either of them knew existed prior to receiving an email that they were to take photos of their trip for the wedding scrapbook.  
>    
>  Of course, due to circumstances, Felix and Dimitri couldn’t exactly say no, since all their friends thought they were doing them a great favor by setting them up for a week’s vacation with each other and didn’t realize they were instead setting up them up for a situation so awkward it should have been illegal—which does, in a way, negate the romcom aspect of the forced adventure, since they didn’t have an option for things to go this way, not when the lie had already gone this far. But all romcom characters must feel similarly about their ridiculously contrived situations, so maybe that argument doesn’t hold up.[ ▲ ]
>   
> 
>   3. It should go without saying, at this point, that your protagonist has a bit of a masochistic streak. What would he expect to find if he did start looking around? This apartment is already smaller and more sparse than Dimitri’s previous college apartments and dorms, though that’s not surprising considering his current place is a tiny one-bed crammed above a Greek restaurant that, by his report, has “the best midnight baklava anyone could hope for.”  
>    
>  Despite its size, his rooms look near the same as all the others he’d lived in in the past, so it’s not like there’s anything new to see. All of the furniture is secondhand and mismatched, but arranged neat and kept tidy. No mess on his desk or at his small dining table, though he has two shelves overflowing with books and notebooks. A familiar oil diffuser on the top shelf that billows out a scent reminiscent of laundry detergent every two hours. Anything of sentimental value had long been relocated back to his parents’ house.[ ▲ ]
>   
> 
>   4. Ingrid and Dorothea, of course, would argue that the energy isn’t anything worth mentioning. They seem to be much more interested in supplying their friends with “a good time,” and would have likely been more than willing to schedule out another week’s worth of lodging and activities.  
>    
>  What Felix will learn eventually is that the idea of this road trip was birthed not only from these two but from a concentrated group effort, one that involved a three-hour-long group call and delegation of tasks through a shared Google document. It is clear, from this entire ordeal, that they have very kind and considerate friends—though their friends would also agree, when the truth finally comes out, that they really should have consulted with either of them before going this far.[ ▲ ]
>   
> 
>   5. The good movies are the ones that use their short runtime wisely. No extraneous, unnecessary information—just what’s necessary to tell the story.  
>    
>  If this was a good movie, it would not waste even a single second on the forty-seven-minute conversation from the previous day’s drive, which Dimitri spent attempting to convince Felix of the taste of hotel waffles, despite the general sketchiness of the liquid eggs and sausage circles that are typically served alongside them.[ ▲ ]
>   
> 
>   6. The first photo—chronologically, that is, by order in which they were taken—of Dimitri, both hands on the wheel, hair tied back to keep from blocking his sunglasses, mouth open just slightly in what looks like a conversation but is actually the beginnings of a yawn.[ ▲ ]
>   
> 
>   7. This is not within the scope of the movie, but it is a fair statement. Their early definition of dating, as would be corroborated by many younger children, entails lunchtime dates over rectangle cuts of pizza in fifth grade, not too unlike what they’re doing tonight. Or walking circles and talking while out on the playground, or saving seats for each other on the bus and spending the ride back home playing hand games that almost always ended with them holding hands. This is not at all unusual.[ ▲ ]
>   
> 
>   8. Also not within the scope of the movie, but also a fair statement. There’s a reason why movies don’t tend to focus on couples with this much history. It’s much too difficult to draw the lines between the children trading chocolate milk and deconstructed Oreo bits in the cafeteria with the teenagers who race each other up the stairs—always in Dimitri’s house, because Glenn had always felt entitled to barging into Felix’s room whenever he wished—to lock themselves in a bedroom for hours, only emerging when Felix finally receives one too many worried texts about if he’s at Dimitri’s and that, if he is, he still has to text ahead to give his family updates.[ ▲ ]
>   
> 
>   9. Tragedy is supposed to be funny in romantic comedies, but it does need to walk a fine line. Whatever sad, ridiculous things that happen need to be balanced just enough that it makes the audience uncomfortable, but not completely irredeemable. Watching your protagonist scroll back through months and months of these texts that prove, in essence, that this is and has been a failing relationship for the past four years, and that it has only been dragging itself on and on before puttering out for good a few months ago—that would admittedly cross the lie.  
>    
>  As a sampler, just know that the majority of the messages carrying the undertone of ‘maybe we should put ourselves out of our misery’ (including, but not limited to: _‘Do you still want to be with me?’ ‘Are you avoiding me?’ ‘Would you let me know if you didn’t love me anymore?’_ ) and ‘I miss you,’ which is pretty self-explanatory.[ ▲ ]
>   
> 
>   10. Also not within the scope of this movie, but there are real reasons why he is—and quite frankly, should—be nervous about fucking up this conversation, as he had fucked up a similar one roughly four years ago when he was tired and Dimitri’s decision to drop out of the premed track at his university had felt more like a personal attack for some reason, like he was making the conscious decision to leave Felix alone in their childhood dreams of being doctors and going through medical school and residency together, and that maybe since they failed the first step of getting into the same college, he’s ready to discard the rest of it without looking back, Felix included.[ ▲ ]
>   
> 
>   11. If you were to scroll back far enough in Felix’s call history—all the way back five years when they just started college—you’d find a plethora of drunk calls and voicemails left by Dimitri from those times. He is a sappy, gushy drunk, and all of the messages are understandably sappy and gushy—along the lines of, "I love you so much, I miss you, I can’t wait until break so I can see you again."[ ▲ ]
>   
> 
>   12. The sixth photo, chronologically—of what vaguely looks like a dim bar, judging by the plush red barstool in the back, Felix sitting in the foreground, harshly illuminated by a flash that catches and highlights how wide his eyes are, his mouth midway through closing around a chicken drumstick, with a stray, orange smear of buffalo sauce against his left cheek.[ ▲ ]
>   
> 
>   13. The tenth photo, chronologically—of Dimitri sitting against a low stone railing, looking through one of the many little bags at his feet, while a gondola rows by behind him on water so blue that it wears your eyes when you look at the photo for too long.[ ▲ ]
>   
> 
>   14. The twelfth photo, chronologically—of Felix standing outside the car at a gas station, bent over to scrub at what looks like chocolate stains on his shirt with a napkin from a fast-food restaurant, positioned just enough to see the flat landscape of the surrounding desert spreading out behind him.[ ▲ ]
>   
> 
>   15. The fifteenth photo, chronologically—of them standing so close that their cheeks press together, eyes turned to each other as they wear their own variations of smiles. The barest sliver of what looks to be a mountain or canyon is visible from above Felix’s head. Otherwise, it’s just a clear, white sky.[ ▲ ]
>   
> 
>   16. Not within the scope of this story so it wouldn’t have gotten any screen time—but the exhaustion may or may not be due to a nightmare he had that night, of being back in undergrad and walking across campus on his way to classes, only to suddenly see an enormous white ball of fluff—Bella—leaping forward, shoving as much of her bulk as she could into his arms, wheezing and choking on her own breath until the light leaves her eyes.  
>    
>  Also not within the scope of this story—but this nightmare is both recurring and based on fact. He does remember this day clearly, with enough conviction that it leaves him with calcified guilt deep, deep in his stomach. The way that he’d gotten the call from Dimitri while he was on his way to his Organic Chemistry final in sophomore year, his voice cracking through the phone in a way that has Felix stopping in the middle of the sidewalk, causing other students behind him to bump into him—“Bella died.”  
>    
>  Nor would it include the aftermath—how he’d stayed on the line long enough that he missed the first half-hour of his exam, promised that he would call Dimitri again that night to check on him after he finished his exam and, between completing a last-minute task for his PI and studying for his Biophysics exam tomorrow, forgot.[ ▲ ]
>   
> 
>   17. His honest, no-good answer—again, just a little too sad and pathetic to be shared with the viewing audience, at risk of making them uncomfortable: _Yes. Because you never even asked me if I still love you. You just made your own assumptions and decided to stop loving me, and, honestly, how was I supposed to keep you in a relationship that made you miserable?_[ ▲ ]
>   
> 
>   18. The final photo, chronologically—of Felix in the passenger side seat, leaning against a rainy window with eyes closed in a nap, Dimitri’s thick cardigan tucked around him for warmth. There is a crumpled Taco Bell bag visible at the foreground of the photo.[ ▲ ]
>   
> 
>   19. This one makes more sense with some extra context.  
>    
>  Being together for years on end accumulates a number of quirks and mannerisms that, understandably, their friends were expecting to see. It must be noted that they did a fairly thorough job of recreating most of those quirks and mannerisms, so it can’t be blamed that they did accidentally leave one out.  
>    
>  Still, it’s important to note here that when Sylvain says ‘always,’ he means ‘ever since that day in high school when you caught them napping together, to the point that the first thing you used to do when you got new phones was text that picture to yourself, and when you were hanging out with other people they had to pretend like it wasn’t obvious when you’d wake it up just to smile at your screen.’[ ▲ ]
>   
> 
>   20. These movies need immediacy. The sad parts are already over. The audience doesn’t need to watch him landing in Philly and coming back to his apartment, with its creaking front door and cramped rooms, unpacking and putting on the stupid alien hat in the bathroom mirror to confirm its stupidity, emptying his jacket pockets of all the diner receipts. At this point, it’s all redundant.[ ▲ ]
>   
> 
>   21. The two brands of romantic comedies are defined primarily by this last piece. The ending.  
>    
>  There is the brand of romantic comedy that ends in happiness and romantic love. Oftentimes, there’s a wedding. Always, there’s a kiss. It is anchored in hope for the future. It is often very sweet, and very, very ideal.  
>    
>  The romantic comedy that ends in tragedy or separation is not as popular, likely because it doesn’t hold the same illusion. But what illusion needs to be upheld? Life can be unfair in all matters, let alone in matters of love.  
>    
>  In fact, the difference in reactions between these two is enough to make people wonder. Is there a point to the journey, despite the ending? Our preferences for endings says that there isn't.  
>    
>  For what it’s worth, Felix does tape up the Polaroid that he took of the Grand Canyon onto his wall, next to other photos of his other friends, and Dimitri starts to see other people. They will still keep in touch, and they will still find times to bring up the inside jokes from this ridiculous week. So there’s no need to worry—even if the story were to end here, like this, they would be fine. Before they were anything more, they were always friends.  
>    
>  —And yet. [ ▲ ]
>   
> 
>   22. How can you tell which will be the romantic comedies that make it through time? It’s hard to tell. There’s a charm in the differences between them—the ones where they stay together, the ones where they separate. It’s clear that it’s not the romance that carries these story as much as it is the acceptance. Maybe the endings are appealing because there's finally peace, in whatever decision is settled on.  
>    
>  The vividness of the story in your memory is probably then left up to what remains after the ending—what is said to matter, and whether or not you'd agree with that sentiment. There can't be a definitive answer.  
>    
>  Anyway. If this story was truly a modern romantic comedy, maybe it would roll credits to a [bouncy soundtrack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GG4aNiGswNQ&list=PLpOLq44ubX23-m3y8n-XLJnIgiIgV3sqb&index=1) and a hectic collage of the photos from the road trip and the wedding.  
>    
>  And after the screen cuts to black? Let whatever come. 
> 


**Author's Note:**

> Felix leans back, making the face that he does when he thinks he's done a good job on something.
> 
> Seeing it makes Dimitri pause. He wants to get this right.
> 
> "So," he says. "The argument is that our relationship _is_ like a romcom, or that it's not?"
> 
> The smile disappears and Felix leans forward now, clearly more agitated. His sharp movements jostle the throw that they're both tucked under, and half of Dimitri's right foot comes out from under it. To his sadness, it quickly begins to grow cold. 
> 
> He wiggles it, hoping that Felix might notice and cover it for him—but Felix is far too fired up. 
> 
> "No. There are _parts_ of our relationship that are like a bad romcom. And parts that _aren't_ like one at all."
> 
> Dimitri—honest to God—doesn't get it.
> 
> This must show on his face, because Felix frowns. "You don't get it."
> 
> "I don't, but that's okay. I think I understand enough about the start of the story being the road trip and the end being the wedding. If I think about it like that, I could see it as a movie. Only—” He pauses, realizing something. “That would mean that we wouldn’t have gotten together again.” 
> 
> “Sure. But that doesn’t matter.”
> 
> Does it not? Dimitri feels like it does matter, even if it’s just a little. Even if this is a strange hypothetical movie reflection of their very poor decisions a few years back, he’d still like it to have a happy ending.
> 
> “I think it does. I'd expect it to have a happy ending if it was a romantic comedy.”
> 
> Felix pins him with a disappointed stare. “Were you even listening? The ending doesn’t matter. The wedding was like a bad romantic comedy because it was stupid. Whether or not we get together at the end doesn’t matter.” 
> 
> “Doesn’t matter to who?” Dimitri asks, feeling a little offended.
> 
> “The fake audience, that doesn’t even exist,” Felix responds, exasperated in a way that indicates he's done with this conversation. “So it _really_ doesn’t matter.” 
> 
> Dimitri can only nod. 
> 
> Sure. None of it matters. 
> 
> He wiggles his uncovered foot again—Felix smiles, and then throws the blanket back over it. 
> 
> Dimitri watches him lean over the plate of gutted Oreo shells to pick up the remote and point it back at the holiday movie on the television, which has been paused for the twenty minutes that it's taken Felix to give his analysis of their relationship and, by extension—apparently—the modern romantic comedy. 
> 
> “Okay, _now_ let’s keep going.”


End file.
